Twin Sunrise
by chi-chi-chimera
Summary: Exploring an ancient Jedi Temple on Vrogas Vas, Luke runs into more trouble than he bargained for. Meanwhile Aphra attempts secure the pilot who destroyed the Death Star, and the Inquisitor who was once Ezra Bridger has a mission of his own. Their paths will lead deep inside the Temple, to the revelation of secrets decades old, made only more complicated when Darth Vader arrives.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** This fic was started when the Darth Vader comics were still coming out, so there are some elements that are not canon because of that, and some things are not canon because of authorial choice.

 **0 ABY - ISD** _ **Devastator**_ **, orbiting Anthan Prime, Anthan system, Outer Rim**

Inspector Thanoth was becoming a problem. Under ordinary circumstances Darth Vader would have welcomed such a high degree of competence in one of his subordinates, but this was starting to inconvenience him. The search for his son must be paramount, and he could not afford to waste time chasing over his own trail and arranging accidents for anyone who might reveal the truth, not with that pitiful pseudo-Inquisitor also hunting the boy. His Master often had strange motives and hidden plans guiding everything he did, but Vader could make no guesses as to why Sidious was showing favour towards those abominations. Did he not have the Inquisitorius at his beck and call? Did he not have Vader?

Much that his Master had done of late was concerning him. Not only Force-heresy, but the revelation that Sidious had lied to him about Padmé, about his child. He had not killed her - she had lived long enough to give birth to their son. Luke. Knowing that her death had not come by his hand had lifted a great burden from him only to replace it with another; for Luke had been stolen from him, Kenobi's final, worst betrayal. Left to grow up in the hell-hole that was Tatooine when he should have been by Vader's side all these years, learning the ways of the Force.

And to think of the times Vader could have killed him, by accident, above Yavin or at their last meeting! He had thought little enough of it at the time, had barely even been paying attention to the boy as anything more than an untrained child not fit to wield the blade he had been given. His escape had given him cause to reconsider that, but even then he had not suspected the truth. But that was hardly Luke's fault. It was Obi-Wan's. Had he feared Luke's potential? Was that why he had not seen fit to teach him _anything_?

Enough of this. Such thoughts were of no use, not until he had the boy in hand, until he could find out from him what had truly happened over the past nineteen years.

Vader signalled his meditation chamber to replace his mask and helmet, and then reached for his private comm. It was a pity he could not just kill Thanoth, but until the time he could arrange for the man's death in a way which did not point to him he would just have to take the risk that the Inspector had found a way to monitor his personal communication. He opened the secure channel to the _Ark Angel_. Thanoth may have been clever in setting a blockade, but he could not cover the whole planet, and Aphra was a better pilot than the man gave her credit for. She had navigated the storm-clouds and bought herself enough time to make the jump to hyperspace.

"Aphra."

"Lord Vader." She answered at once, and there was no sign of fear in her. He might have doubted her, her loyalty or her sanity, had he not read her through the Force. She was, in all honesty, committed to his cause. Her words to him, her appreciation of the small part she might play in his plans for the galaxy, was all true. This was not a sentiment that he encountered often and it was... pleasing. Unlike most Imperial officers, Aphra could respect him without the need to be afraid of him. And yet in working for Vader's own ends, she had become a danger to him, for Aphra now knew things that allowed her a hold over him. She had proved that when she had warded off her death with the promise of finding his son.

He would not kill her _yet_ , but as they both knew, he _would_ kill her.

"Prove that I have not erred in allowing you to live," he told her.

"The Ante delivered," she replied. "Skywalker is on Vrogas Vas. It's a small, insignificant mud-ball in the Outer Rim, but I suppose small and insignificant is where you want to be when the whole Empire is after you."

Vrogas Vas. The name resonated in some distant corner of his memory, but he could not think of where he might have heard it before. However he doubted that his son had gone there simply to hide. Subtlety did not appear to be part of the boy's vocabulary. He had been the same way, once. No, there must be some other reason.

And yet how to reach his son, when the Inspector remained a suspicious, capable anchor to this system? The situation would not be one where the vast might of the Imperial Starfleet would be of any benefit. Rather a small team, or Vader only, should be sufficient to retrieve the boy. As he did not anticipate being able to leave at any point in the near future, then it would have to be someone he trusted. Someone whom he _knew_ had no other allegiances. To his discomfort, this left Aphra as the only candidate.

On the other hand, it would not do to let more than one person run around the galaxy with too much vital information about him. Aphra knew too much already, and he was committed to her eventual death. Since he had been forced to spare her, it was best she continued to earn her keep.

"I will be unable to leave this system," he told her. "Proceed to Vrogas Vas and locate Skywalker. He is _not_ to be harmed in any way." Vader considered for a moment. Aphra was certainly capable, but she was not Force-sensitive. Even with droid assistance, he could not reasonably expect her to capture his son and - more importantly - keep him captured. Nor would it be safe to bring Luke back to him at this time.

"Monitor Skywalker's location. Do not loose him."

"He's managed to stay out of the Empire's hands so far," Aphra pointed out. "He's a smart kid. He's going to notice a tail sooner or later."

"Then approach him. Offer your assistance."

"Ah," Aphra winked. "A spy on the inside of the Rebellion. Perfect. And if it keeps me well out of the way of your Inspector Thanoth all the better."

"Indeed. Vader out."

He shut off the connection and sat back, contemplating his course of action. The Force pulsed around him, reassuring, letting him know that he had made the right decision. Yes, Aphra would keep his son safe for him until the time that he could finally make things right and let the boy know the truth of his heritage.

Luke would join him, and then, well, then the galaxy would be theirs for the taking.

* * *

 **0 ABY -** _ **Ark Angel**_ **, en route to Vrogas Vas**

So it looked like Lord Vader wasn't quite finished with her yet. Aphra was well aware that her death was inevitable, but that didn't mean she was just going to let it happen, not if she could think of some way out of it, or at least to delay it. When the Ante had given her a bargaining chip, she had used it, but that hadn't meant she thought she would live past the next time Vader saw her. She certainly hadn't expected to be given another mission.

Luke Skywalker. The Rebel pilot who had taken out the Death Star. Pretty impressive for a kid from some backwater like Tatooine. She'd seen the place where he'd grown up and it had reminded her a lot of her own childhood; sparse, dull, and in the end your family was just a victim when somebody stronger came along. Yeah, she'd use that. Points in common were always a good bet when trying to make friends. It was interesting that Lord Vader didn't want her to bring the boy to him, given that the Emperor would be bound to look favourably on whoever caught the kid, but perhaps he thought by itself that wouldn't be enough. If Skywalker led them to the Rebel base and they could catch them all in one fell swoop…

That was the sort of ambitious plan the big man in black would go for. And all of it, all these different jobs he had been sending her on, it all felt connected in some way that she just wasn't grasping yet. The droids and the credits were obvious, as was Skywalker, but Naboo? It must fit in somewhere. Just look at Vader's personal ship. But apart from the obvious connection to the Emperor himself - and she didn't think that was it - she couldn't make it mesh with everything else.

If she played her cards right and this spying mission went well, then maybe she might actually survive long enough to work out the big picture.

* * *

 **0 ABY - ISB Bayonet** _ **Starfall**_ **, en route to Vrogas Vas**

 _Hera screaming. Kanan's eyes wide at the moment of death. The spit of burning flesh, the smell. Drawing his saber out of what was now only a corpse. Picking up the lightsaber of his foe, discarded as it rolled from his slackening fingers._

 _No, no, no, over and over as Hera went for her blaster. Rage and pain swirling in the Force._

 _Leaving, leaping the way he had come, a scrabble and a run through deserted passages._

 _He would not kill them. There was no need. He would not let them_ make _him kill them._

The Inquisitor opened his eyes.

His dreams had been unusually focused on the past recently. The Twelfth Brother didn't see what reason the Force could have for directing his attention to events that had happened years ago, not when there was so much to be done in the present. The Jedi Order had once pervaded the galaxy like a particularly resilient fungus, and there always seemed to be more symptoms of their memory to be rooted out no matter how hard the Inquisitorius worked. For an example take his current mission. An ISB agent in Hutt Space had reported overhearing Grakkus the Hutt - known collector of relics of the Old Republic - mention a Jedi Temple on Vrogas Vas, which was _not_ in Hutt Space and therefore subject to the bounty that existed on all information pertaining to the Jedi. The agent would receive a generous stipend to their salary, and the Inquisitorius would, as a matter of protocol, send an Inquisitor to the temple to destroy anything dangerous and retrieve anything that might be of value.

It was routine, but the Twelfth Brother liked routine. Besides, there was satisfaction to be taken in this kind of work - the Jedi had been weak, their philosophy one which strangled and held back its disciples. Jedi lacked the strength to protect _themselves_ , much less those they loved, not that they had been permitted to love.

The Twelfth Brother had been taken in by the lies of one of the last Jedi remaining. Perhaps not overt lies, but he had implied that he could give him the strength to avenge his family and defend the new family he had found. There had been no mention that in the end he would have to give up that family. There had been no mention of the fact that true strength could only be found in the Dark Side. There had been no mention that in the end all his convictions, the things that truly _mattered_ would be made meaningless to him in the passive, pacifying wash of the Light Side.

No, the Jedi philosophy had been a poison, and the Emperor had been right to flush it from the galaxy even at the great cost that had taken. If only he had stopped there…

But the Twelfth Brother had learned long ago that some thoughts were dangerous to allow in your mind. If his ambitions did not align with those of his masters, then so be it, the time would come to act on them, but that time was not now. His training had taught him patience.

He would see what the Force would reveal to him when he arrived at Vrogas Vas.

* * *

 **0 ABY – Temple Ruins, Vrogas Vas**

Vrogas Vas had turned out to be a temperate planet covered in deciduous forests, water features and fog. There didn't seem to be any sign of sentient life inhabiting it, even though it could clearly support it. Luke's X-wing could perform atmospheric analysis from low-orbit, and it was mostly nitrogen and oxygen, plus traces of other elements and compounds, none of which was harmful to most galactic species. There was no evidence of recent space-traffic, no orbital platforms, no space stations, not even so much as a satellite. The star was a fat red sun which had been in the last stages of its life for millions of years and would continue on like that for millions more. Landmass temperatures looked chilly but tolerable, and the Jedi holocron had told him that there was a temple here. So why was no-one living here anymore?

The holocron of Phin-Law Wo had not said anything about that. Luke had spent his time in hyperspace between Nar Shaddah and here listening to it again and again. It wasn't very long. On it, the Jedi Master spoke about the Force in terms that were about as vague as Ben had used, talking about the Light Side and the Dark Side, the importance of calmness and the dangers of anger and aggression, how a 'Padawan' – whatever that was – should open themselves to the Living Force and allow it to flow through them and show them the way. 'A Jedi obeys the Will of the Force'.

That was all very well, and Luke was finding it easier every time he tried to reach out to that vast well-spring, that sense of... of everything, of being connected to the whole world moving around him as one. That place where time moved as fast or as slow as he needed it to, and his body was strong enough to do anything. Now he could even just about manage to do it without closing his eyes beforehand. But he could never keep it up for very long.

If only they hadn't had to leave the Smuggler's Moon in such a hurry... In the chaos that the Empire had caused clashing with Grakkus' private army, Han, Leia and Chewbacca had managed to get him out of the arena and away through the heaving crowds into the Palace. There had been only enough time to get his father's lightsaber, Ben's journal, and this one holocron from the Hutt's trophy room before they had to flee ahead of the stormtroopers who were suddenly sweeping the corridors. At the time it had seemed as though he had chosen this holocron at random, but now Luke suspected the Force had guided his hand. It made him hopeful about what he was going to find on Vrogas Vas.

Han, Leia and the others had gone their own way. There was some trouble with a woman whom Han had known in his smuggling days that needed to be sorted out, and Chewbacca had to return to the Rebellion to debrief them on everything that had happened. Luke wasn't ready to go back yet. Perhaps after this, if this temple held the secrets to becoming a Jedi...

"Anything else on the scans Artoo?" he asked the astromech. Artoo warbled a reply in the negative. "Then let's take her in." The holocron had at least given him a rough location on the planet to start searching.

Soaring down through the cover of thick clouds, Luke found himself flying over a landscape of little islands separated by an interconnected network of rivers. Trees crowded close together and dipped their trailing branches into the water. So much water. It had been... what, a few months now since leaving Tatooine and he still wasn't used to it. Even in space where sonic showers were the norm there was still all the water you could drink, whenever you wanted it. No careful storage in the deep cellar, no waiting on the drip, drip of the condensers because you started the morning circuit too early and the machines are still drawing the dew out of the atmosphere... People could be so _wasteful_ with water, and it mattered as little to them as... as sand!

Thick fog curled up from the rivers and lay heavy in valleys. Polewards, the land was beginning to climb up towards hills, and he turned the X-wing in that direction. The holocron had said the temple was perched on a mountain, looking down over cliffs to a view of the river-lands. Luke flew through a bank of cloud and then... there! A hint of sun, glinting off metal.

The temple was overgrown with trees and vines, not even the four tall pointed towers entirely escaping, but there was a large courtyard out in front of the building where Luke felt safe enough to set the X-wing down. An empty archway led into the temple itself, and a set of wide steps left the courtyard from the other side and trailed down into the forest. There was a bite to the air after the climate-controlled cockpit of the fighter – which Luke tended to keep on the high setting anyway – but his flight-suit protected him from the worst of it. His breath misted out, loosing itself in the thin fog that persisted even at this height.

"I guess we're here R2," Luke said, as the droid lowered himself down from the X-wing. "Not that it looks like much just yet."

There was a dead, deserted feeling about the temple, as though it had been many years since the last living being had walked here. The archway seemed to gape like a mouth. Luke took a deep breath in and out, then closed his eyes and focused on the Force. As gradual as sand shifting on a dune, awareness filled his senses. All around him the forest was alive, alive and wild, teeming with birds and predators and prey. But the temple... the temple was calm and... deep? Not bad, exactly, but not really safe either. If felt as though if he went inside, it would be easy to get lost in there.

It didn't feel like the Dark Side. It was nothing like Vader, who had been colder than the desert at night, and as furious as a krayt-dragon. Looking at him through the Force was like looking at one of the Hutts' pit-beasts, something deadly, barely contained and not in the least tame. This was like a dark sky hidden by clouds. You knew there were stars, but they couldn't be seen from where you stood.

Opening his eyes, he took the first steps inside.

Very quickly darkness enveloped him. There was a feeling in the air of a large space around him, but there were no windows, and whatever light source had once been here was long dead. The standard X-wing flight suit came equipped with a flashlight attached to the front however, and as he flicked it on the beam lit up the dust in the air and revealed that he was standing at the foot of a wide set of stairs. There was a statue in front of him, broken in half and quite worn, but the outstretched lightsaber it held at guard in its remaining hand was still plain to see.

It hit him then all of a sudden, the weight of loss. Before he was born there had been hundreds of Jedi all across the galaxy, probably more, and hundreds of places just like this. Now with Ben gone he was the only one left, and he wasn't even a real Jedi at all. He didn't really know anything about them. There was nothing on the holonet, nothing written down, and the only things that remained were memories in the heads of people too frightened of monsters like Darth Vader to speak them out loud, or whatever was locked up in the 'collections' of creatures like Grakkus.

From the looks of it though, this temple had been out of use a lot longer than those few decades. But from what Luke had been able to make out from Ben's journal, the Old Jedi Order had based themselves out of the temple on Coruscant, and these places had been something like... cultural sites and places that students would go to train. Jedi Trials had been mentioned.

Hopefully he could find something here that would help him.

* * *

The Jedi temple was a confusing place. Luke had spent the past few days exploring it, but it was a maze inside, and every time he tried to go deeper within, towards the sense of heavy calm in the Force, he found himself getting turned around, often ending up back by the entrance stairs. He had at least managed to find the old living quarters, which was where he had been spending his nights in front of a fire set from fallen wood he had gathered in the forest outside. It made it warm enough to sleep curled up next to it, Artoo keeping watch. It would have been warmer to wear his flight-suit all the time rather than the clothes Han had lent him, but it was starting to stink from so much time spent in hyperspace. There were also bathing pools there, run-off from a diverted mountain stream that cascaded down in a waterfall from an opening high above. If there had ever been a mechanism to heat it though, that had long-since died, and it was freezing. Luke had found that out the hard way.

At the moment he was trying to meditate. Master Wo's holocron had said that doing so was vital to touching the Force and becoming attuned to its will, as well as a way of opening yourself up to anything it might be trying to tell you. It was harder than it sounded. Every time Luke felt himself slipping into an awareness of the Force his nose would start to itch, or his stomach would growl, or he would shiver because despite the fire this planet was still damp and _cold_. It was as though the Force was dancing just out of his reach, daring him to come catch it. Nor had he heard anything from Ben's familiar voice echoing in the back of his mind. Maybe that really _had_ been a hallucination. Or maybe Ben thought he was managing fine on his own, despite evidence to the contrary.

Perhaps this was enough meditating for right now. Luke stood up, stretching, and sighed. This trip was proving to be a lot less productive than he had hoped. At least no-one was shooting at him, or trying to steal his lightsaber, or enslaving him this time.

There was something coming. Whether it was the Force, or just his ears picking up something on the edge of his hearing Luke didn't know, but as he stretched out his senses it became more and more obvious. Ship engines, heading his way. Well there was no way _that_ could be anything good! He'd seen for himself that no-one came to this planet, and now the moment _he_ got here he had company? Why oh why had he started thinking that things were quiet!

The X-wing was still out in the courtyard, completely unprotected, and there was no way to get to it and move it in time now. By the sound of it, whatever was coming was around about the size of the _Millennium Falcon_ ; certainly not the scream of a TIE fighter, but that didn't rule out an Imperial shuttle, or a bounty hunter like Fett. Fett had managed to track him down on Tatooine even though he hadn't told _anyone_ he was going back there. Was it such a stretch to think they could track him here? From the sounds of it, the bounty on his head was a big one.

On the other hand, Luke had an advantage that whoever this was didn't. He knew this building – or at least sort of knew it – and the stranger or strangers did not. It was confusing enough in here for someone who could touch the Force, and it had to be worse for someone who couldn't. He could lose them in the maze of corridors, and then... well then it would depend on who they were and what they wanted.

There was a balcony area nearby that looked down over the entrance hall. Luke made his way there stealthily and crouched behind the balustrade waiting for some sign of the stranger. There was no guarantee they would have a light that he could see; they might have low-light vision goggles for all he knew. Bounty hunters were generally prepared for most things. You heard a lot of stories about bounty hunters on Tatooine, mostly tall tales, but with enough truth in them that he wasn't about to underestimate whoever walked through that door.

What he was _not_ expecting was for that person to do so shouting.

"Hello! Unknown pilot! I know you're in here somewhere; that's your X-wing out in the courtyard, right? Hey, you've not fallen into a pit trap or something have you?"

The voice was female, but that was about all Luke could tell from it. She didn't have any particular accent, nothing that would have screamed out either Core Worlder or Outer Rim 'lowlife'. Peering through the pillars of the balustrade, he could see her standing by the entrance, hands on hips, backlit by some kind of big diffused-light emitter she had put down behind her. She was wearing a flight cap with goggles pushed up over it and a short-sleeved synth-leather jacket. It looked like there might be some sort of linear tattoo on her right arm, but he couldn't make it out at this distance.

"Kriff, it's dark in here isn't it?" she called out, looking around. "I sure hope you haven't fallen down some stairs somewhere and broken your neck."

She really wasn't acting like a bounty hunter. If she was one, she'd be the strangest Luke had ever heard of. But this could all still be some sort of trick. He started to close his eyes and reach for the Force, then opened them again. He was supposed to be trying to learn how to do this with his eyes _open_ , kriff it! He could do this! The Force was all around him, he _knew_ this, all he had to do was touch it and it would tell him what he needed to know.

Gradually he could feel himself sliding into the Force, or was he opening up to it? Either way, he could see her now, a steady and determined presence. If he looked closer, close enough to really _see_ her... he was getting flashes of _something_. Not thoughts, exactly, not words, more like feelings. She had come here seeking a specific goal, but she wasn't looking to do violence. Luke didn't sense that she meant him any harm. There were secrets there, things buried under the surface, but that was only natural. Everyone had secrets.

It seemed like at the moment, he could trust her. He stood up.

"Up here," he cried out, waving. She turned to look at him. "Sorry, I was worried you were with the Empire. Listen, I'll come down to meet you. It's easy to get lost in here."

Luke made his way back through the living quarters and down the twisting set of ramps and corridors that led to the hall, Artoo following him, bleeping in curiosity. By the time he reached the stranger, she had already set up several more of the light emitters, illuminating the room almost all the way to the ceiling. She stood up when she saw him, wiping dust off of her hands on her pants.

"Nice to meet you, kid," she said. "Name's Aphra. I'm an archaeologist."

"Explains the emitters," Luke replied. And at least that made it a bit more clear what she was doing here. There was a chance that this could just be one big coincidence. "I'm Luke."

"Here scouting for the Rebellion?" Aphra asked. Luke tensed, and she laughed. "Relax, that's a T-65 model X-wing you've got parked outside, and there's not too many of those kicking around the galaxy."

"Not going to turn me over to the Empire? I hear they've got a pretty nice bounty out on rebels these days."

"Yeah, and by now there's a pretty nice bounty out on me," Aphra replied. "Seeing as by now they know I led the crew that stole a _really_ big shipment of credits from them. That's one of the reasons I'm out here, actually. Nice and out of the way. Somewhere to lie low until the heat dies down. So if you don't turn _me_ in, I'll return the favour."

"How did you even know about this place anyway?"

Aphra shrugged. "Smugglers know a lot of things."

"I thought you said you were an archaeologist?"

Aphra smiled. "Sometimes people aren't too pleased when you dig up a certain thing that they think belongs to them."

"You know, you remind me a lot of someone I know," Luke said.

"Someone you like, I hope," Aphra replied.

"Heh, yeah." He missed Han already, missed Leia just as much, and it had only been a week since he had seen them last. But that had been very brief, and they had been running for their lives at the time, so it barely counted. Soon though. Soon he would see his friends again, when he was finally able to call himself a Jedi.

"I've told you why _I'm_ here," Aphra said. "Any chance you might be able to make my life easier for me? Seen anything interesting while you've been here scouting? Or should I be finding some other place to hide, if the Rebellion is coming here to set up a base?"

"I've spent most of my time in the temple, but like I said, it's easy to get turned around. I wouldn't be in a hurry to recommend it for military use."

"So I should be safe enough." Aphra smiled. "You know, I hadn't realised that this was an old Jedi temple. My sources seem to have left out that little detail. Most of the stuff you can find in places like this is useless to anyone that can't use the powers those guys had, but you can still get good money for it, from the Empire at least if none of the collectors are feeling flush."

"There's nothing here," Luke said quickly. Kriff, if she was just looking to stay out of the Empire's way that was one thing, but he couldn't let her _pillage_ this place! She might think there was no-one left for it to belong to, and Luke couldn't risk telling her otherwise, but... if he was going to be the last of the Jedi, that meant he had to protect what was theirs. Protect what little was left.

Aphra raised an eyebrow. "I thought you said yourself you haven't managed to explore the whole place yet?"

"Yeah, because I _can't_ ," Luke said in exasperation. "The temple won't let me!"

"Perhaps you just need the skills of an expert archaeologist to help you? Come on, I'll split the loot. It's only fair since you were here first."

"I don't think that's a very good idea. There might be traps."

Aphra grinned. "Aren't you at least a little curious?"

"If I refuse to come with you, you're just going to go anyway, aren't you?" Luke sighed. That didn't leave him with much of a choice. If he let Aphra wander around the temple alone, there could be a million things that could go wrong, from whatever 'trials' there might be that could only be survived with the Force, to the chance she might find something he needed and make off with it.

"Yup."

"Fine."

"Okay then! Let's go."

"You want to do this now?" Luke asked. "It'll be night in a few hours!"

"I don't plan to do more than a preliminary survey," Aphra explained. "I'll map and light the areas you already know, and if we have time we can think about going further in." She shrugged. "I've got all the time in the world right now."

Luke couldn't think of any reasonable excuse to stop her, aside from the truth. "Let's get this over with."

* * *

Aphra wasn't sure what she had been expecting from the pilot who blew up the Death Star, but it wasn't this kid. He was practically still a teenager, and there was this innocent quality to him that a person really shouldn't still have after killing several hundred thousand people, even indirectly. After seeing the farm where this Luke Skywalker had grown up, where his family had been executed, she'd been expecting... well someone a bit more jaded. A bit more like herself – an Outer Rim criminal, with all that entailed. He seemed far too trusting to have grown up on a Hutt dustball like Tatooine. He'd barely questioned why she was here, just accepted everything she said at face value. If this was the sort of person the Rebels were employing it was a wonder every second one of them wasn't a spy by now.

And there was this temple. She didn't know all that much about Force stuff; she'd only been a child when the Jedi Order was destroyed. She remembered the stories, if hazily, watered down as they must have been for a little kid. She knew they had been able to do incredible things – and horrible things, which was why they had had to be destroyed – and she had seen what Vader could do with the Force, although he wasn't a Jedi. He was... something else, although it wasn't the sort of thing you just came out and asked the guy. A Sith Lord, said the rumours. He was the Emperor's enforcer, had led hundreds of campaigns across the galaxy without ever having any official fixed position within the ranks, and he was involved with the Inquisitorius somehow at the high levels. Even if the rest of it hadn't been the case, no-one wanted to pry too much into ISB business, not even the hungriest rumour-monger. This temple had belonged to the Jedi once, and she suspected Skywalker was here looking for more than just a place for a new Rebel base.

What had Vader said on Tatooine? He'd probably thought she couldn't hear him, but that building had been small, and his vocoder echoed. 'The boy is strong in the Force'? That meant maybe he would be able to get past whatever kind of protections the Jedi had put on this place and find something that would... what? Teach him how to use those powers too?

She still didn't really know what the Force _was_. The way Vader talked about it, when he said anything at all, it sounded more like a religion. If so, the Jedi were... a different sect? If it weren't for the fact that this would make Skywalker, and hence the Rebellion, stronger, Aphra wouldn't have cared about any of this. But should she stop him? Whatever happened, the kid wasn't about to suddenly become able to defeat Darth Vader, so when he finally showed up to capture him and his Rebel friends, it wouldn't matter what Luke might or might not have learned about Jedi. And Vader had told her explicitly to tail the kid, and that would be difficult if he saw her as an enemy.

So all in all, it was probably better that she kept on playing the part of scoundrel archaeologist – mostly true – and pretended she was only interested in the relics she might find. The droids could stay in shut-down on the _Ark Angel_ , and they could all remain good friends.

* * *

The TIE/ln was not really designed to be piloted in atmosphere, and was prone to drag and turbulence against its wide wing surfaces, but if you knew what you were doing it was perfectly safe. In some ways it would be easier to take the _Starfall's_ shuttle when the Twelfth Brother wanted to land on a planet, but all things considered he preferred the TIE's maneuverability. You didn't want to be stuck in a shuttle when Rebels, pirates or smugglers came gunning for you.

Even skimming the cloud-cover the Twelfth Brother could sense that this planet was teeming with the Force. Of course it would be, because Jedi didn't build their temples just anywhere. It was a sure sign that the information he had been given was right, and that there was work here for the Inquisitorius. He could feel the location of the temple as well, a deep, still well that could be hiding all sorts of dangers. Dangers that he was well prepared for. Dangers that would be nothing to him.

Well, let's not get overconfident, he told himself. That was a sure way to end up with another Inquisitor's lightsaber buried in your back, if you didn't fall victim to habitual Imperial inter-service and inter-rank plotting first. Things that looked easy often weren't.

Normally the vacuum of space meant that there was nothing to carry the scream of the TIE's twin ion engines, but right now they were deafening. Perhaps that was why he didn't hear the warning beep of an incoming transmission from one of the probe droids at first, at least not until he had nearly reached the temple. The droid had been sent ahead to confirm and scout the location, and as the Twelfth Brother brought up its scans on his screen, he appreciated that caution.

There were already two ships parked in the temple courtyard. One was a typical smuggler's junker, although certainly faster and nastier than it looked, and the other… the other was an X-wing. Rebels. Here. How, or more importantly, why? There had been vague rumours that a man wielding a lightsaber had been seen on the Death Star in the company of known rebels in the weeks before its destruction, but nothing concrete, and besides, it was equally said that Lord Vader had killed him. But could the Rebellion have found some Force sensitives that the Inquisition had missed - from Hutt space, or the remoter parts of the Outer Rim - and be considering training them? There were enough former senators of the Old Republic amongst their ranks to have some memories of the Jedi.

It seemed he would be doing more here than just destroying a few artefacts.

Unfortunately his delay in responding to the droid's signal meant that he was almost certainly close enough for them to hear his TIE's approach. They would be expecting him. Well, so what? Any Inquisitor was more than a match for a few rebels, even if they included some untrained Force-sensitives. The Twelfth Brother set his TIE down in a forest clearing half a klick away from the temple. There was more than one way to skin a loth-cat, and that building had other entrances than just the main door. He would approach stealthily and hope to avoid any ambush they might have set up.

Before long, he was underneath the temple walls, looking up towards the empty, open windows high above. One Force-assisted leap later, his hands found purchase on the sill, and the Twelfth Brother easily clambered up into the room beyond. The embers of a fire still smouldered on the floor, with a pile of blankets tossed in a heap nearby. Square stone beds were arranged along both walls, but none appeared to be in use. Someone had been sleeping here, he could sense it, someone strong in the Force but completely unshielded. That was the only way they could have left so great a trace of their presence behind.

So where were they now? He called on the Dark Side, feeling it fill his veins like fire. It was always present, he never really stopped touching it, but when he pulled it into him like this it felt as though he had the strength to do anything. He looked outwards.

It was like looking at the sun. It seemed impossible that he could have missed this… this… _supernova_ of pure, wild Force energy, this warm ball of fire shining amidst the dim campfires of the flora and fauna outside. When had he ever seen something this strong before? Not his old master Kanan. Not Fulcrum - even if he hadn't been properly trained back then he would have noticed if Fulcrum had felt like _this_. None of the other Inquisitors had this kind of presence. The only person he could think of was Darth Vader himself, whose cold rage could surely have drowned even this.

Just what exactly had the Rebellion got its hands on?

The sheer strength of this person in the Force actually made it harder to pinpoint their location. He felt that he could roughly judge the direction, but any more than that… But it was a start. And clearly he had to do _something_. If this Force-sensitive could be captured or convinced to come with him back to Mustafar…

But they were almost certainly a rebel, and so they wouldn't understand the importance of being shown how to use the Force in the right way. So he would have to kill them. It was a pity and a waste, but there it was. The Twelfth Brother had given up wishful thinking when he had given up his old name.

He followed the pull of the Force down a corridor and out onto a narrow balcony looking down into what must be the entrance hall. There were two people crouched behind the wreckage of a broken Jedi statue, pointing blasters at the door. Only two? This would be easier than he'd thought. One was a woman dressed a lot like the smugglers he'd known over the years, the other a man about his age. He was the one who burned in the Force.

The Twelfth Brother leapt, using the Dark Side to break his fall. He landed on the stairs behind the pair, drawing his lightsaber and igniting it. They spun around, swearing.

"That's an Inquisitor!" the smuggler said, already firing. The Brother deflected the shots easily. She wasn't the threat here.

"A what?" the other said.

Definitely not from an Imperial world.

"I'm not necessarily here to harm you," the Brother told them. "If you don't know what an Inquisitor does, then I'll explain. We locate Force-sensitive children in Imperial Space, and we take them to Mustafar to be trained in the ways of the Force. It's as simple as that. We seem to have missed out on you, though. But it's not too late. There's still time for you to join us. To learn how to use the powers you must know you have."

For a moment, the rebel hesitated. The Twelfth Brother sensed confusion within him, and a great pain. "I thought the Empire killed all the Jedi," he said.

"We did," the Brother replied. "Inquisitors are _not_ Jedi. The Jedi are not what you've been told. The Rebellion has lied to you."

"My father was a Jedi," the rebel replied, and flicked aside his jacket to reveal the lightsaber hidden beneath it. "And so am I."

" _Karabas_ ," the Brother swore. This was… this was really bad. Although this padawan clearly wasn't trained, he didn't hold the saber like someone who had never used one before. _Someone_ had given it to him. His father? Was he still alive? Even one live Jedi was capable of spreading their poison far and wide.

He gathered himself. This didn't have to be a disaster. "If he had a son, then clearly your father wasn't a very good Jedi," he said. "And that's a _good_ thing. The Jedi..."

"My father was a great man," the rebel snapped, drawing his lightsaber and igniting the blue blade. "Before Darth Vader betrayed and killed him!"

The surge of anger from the padawan should have made him pleased, but the rebel wasn't concentrating enough to draw on the Force at all, let alone the Dark Side. And what he had said… Well. That was that, then. If this guy had a vendetta against Lord Vader, then he would never accept being taught by him. It was an essential part of training, and although the Brother thought that rage might be channelled to great effect, if he couldn't quiet it and _listen_ long enough to learn something then he would just end up dead. If he even got that far.

No. Maybe he just wasn't persuasive enough, but he couldn't see any way of getting the rebel to come with him. So it would be death then.

Which was around the time the astromech droid shot him in the back.

* * *

 **4 BBY - Lothal, Lothal Sector, Outer Rim**

The only good thing about their rush to leave Lothal was that it didn't give Ezra time to _think_. They had to keep going, keep fighting, keep trying, find a way to save both themselves and the people of this planet. The Empire wasn't exactly above killing their own - Minister Tua's death proved that much - and Lothal was only Imperial by default. And with Moff Tarkin behind this… Ezra thought he knew the man well enough from his 'object example' that was Tarkintown to be sure that he wouldn't hesitate to use the excuse they had manufactured - ruthless Rebel terrorists murdering a 'beloved' public official - to kill anyone and everyone they wanted to.

They had to get off planet. It was the only way that anyone here would be safe. If he focused enough on that fact, it was almost enough to forget that his home was burning behind him, the last remaining link to his parents nothing more than ashes. Everything he had, every last little reminder, was gone.

Perhaps that was where it had started. That anger. Well of course he was angry, who wouldn't be? No-one could see what the bucketheads were capable of and not be furious. If Ezra hadn't been angry all his life since his mother and father had been taken away, he wouldn't have spent the last few years before meeting the crew of the Ghost running around Central City causing trouble wherever he could. Wouldn't have met Kanan in the first place. Wouldn't have discovered that the uncanny instincts that sometimes pricked at him were something called the Force. Wouldn't have learned how to use it. It was all very well Kanan warning him to set those feelings aside, but he could barely remember a time that he hadn't felt this way. Deep down. He could hide it, sure, and he often did, because for so long he couldn't _do_ anything about it. It was easier to pretend there was nothing wrong. But that's all it was; pretending. So he didn't find it too hard to push his anger far away whenever he touched the Force, but that didn't mean it wasn't there somewhere.

At the time, Kanan's idea to steal a shuttle in the factory district had seemed to be their only real chance of escape and the best plan they had. The problem was, that wasn't a coincidence. It was all by design. A trap. Finding the portable shield generators, maybe that hadn't been intended by the Imperials, but that didn't matter much when the jaws of the Empire's might were closing around them. The first sign that something was wrong was the chill. It was like all the air had been sucked away into the great blackness of open, empty space, taking him with it, tearing his lungs from his throat and making his blood ripple and boil. Then silence, spreading in a tidal wave. All of it coming from just one spot.

Kanan had felt it too. Stiffened beside him, turned slowly, lightsaber springing into his hand. There was a gap between the huge doors leading into the Sienar warehouse. Someone standing there, a figure in black, just a silhouette in a shaft of moonlight coming from some skylight far overhead. Then the snap and hiss of a lightsaber igniting, and a thin line of red blossomed in the figure's hand. It felt like the bottom of Ezra's stomach had fallen out.

Another Inquisitor? There _was_ more than one?

As the Inquisitor stepped forward, breathing in harsh, regulated rasping, the squad of Stormtroopers spreading out behind it was honestly the least of their worries. Acting as one, following the prompting of the faint training bond between them, Ezra ignited his lightsaber in time with Kanan, dropping into guard position just as he'd been taught. In that moment, it didn't seem like much use at all.

The air hummed as saber met saber. The new Inquisitor seemed unbelievably strong, pressing down on Kanan with only a single-handed grip against all the force of a double-handed defence. Then a wave of the Force snapped out, throwing he and Ezra backwards before either of them could react. Ezra landed hard, rolled, gasping for breath. Kanan recovered more quickly and leapt to the attack once again. Ezra could only watch how little good it did. With dismissive ease the armoured figure had Kanan's wrists in one hand above his head, dragging him off his feet. _Sith_ , the Inquisitor was tall! In that crushing grip Kanan's hands loosened and his saber clattered to the ground. Then a flick of one arm sent him flying to crash against a pile of crates, slumping, dazed. Ezra watched in horror.

Now it was his turn.

Again that casual push of Force energy, throwing him meters, pushing him up against the leg of one of the unfinished walkers. It closed around him like a fist. It felt familiar; it felt just like the way that last Inquisitor had used the Force. It was suffocating. There was anger in it, but a cold, impersonal anger. Ezra was afraid, and he couldn't fight it.

"Your Master has deceived you," the Inquisitor said. His voice was a low, threatening rumble, distorted by the mask, "into believing you can become a Jedi." As he spoke the invisible fist tightened, closing around Ezra's right arm, forcing the lightsaber he held towards his own throat. He tried to resist, but the power of his muscles was nothing compared to the power of the Force.

His throat was free, he would have had time to shout some final, defiant words, but nothing sprang to mind. Defence of Kanan? Kanan had never lied to him, he'd promised exactly what he could give. Ezra knew Kanan had never been a Jedi Master, but he'd still been a Jedi and there was still so much that he _could_ teach him. Sometimes Ezra found his lessons a little frustrating, difficult to grasp, but he had made so much progress already. But how to put all that into words? How to describe the hope Kanan had given him that he could actually _do_ something about the Empire, could actually get some revenge - real revenge - for what had happened to his parents. That he could make a difference.

The blade of his saber crept ever closer to his neck.

Then someone was shouting, and the coiled strength that held him vanished in an instant, letting him slide down the cold metal with enough time to get his feet under him. It was Kanan, leaping back into combat, exchanging rapid blows that seemed to do nothing to concern the Inquisitor. But with that mask he wore, it was impossible to read him, impossible to tell if he was even breaking a sweat. Reaching out to the Force was no help; there was nothing but a wall where the man was, a wall made of cold fire and rage.

Ezra had to do something. He was operating now on instinct and the Force, letting it flow through him, guide him as he joined the fray. Yet after a few smooth parrys from their enemy he was sent flying yet again. The Force was protecting him from feeling the results of all those impacts, but it could only do so much.

Kanan was locked saber to saber with the Inquisitor. The blades crackled and buzzed against one another. Then the masked man did something complicated with his lightsaber, flicked it in a great whirling arc that broke it away from Kanan's and…

It happened so fast. One moment Kanan was standing defiant, the next he was on the floor, clutching his arm or… the stump where his arm had been.

Things became… less clear after that. Ezra's memory played tricks on him - he knew he had screamed, he knew he had tried to attack, but… There had been an explosion, the AT-ST walkers coming crashing down in front of them in a shower of flames and sparks, forcing the Inquisitor to jump away to avoid it. Zeb had run forwards, grabbed Kanan and heaved him over his shoulder, stumbling under the weight as he turned back towards the shuttle. Sabine had called out to Ezra, urged him on, but suddenly a red lightsaber was blocking the way and there was nowhere for him to turn.

It hadn't been abandonment. Even after everything that had happened… afterwards… Ezra refused to see it as that. It had been survival, the only option. Hera had made the call, and she had taken off, blaster bolts filling the air behind the shuttle as it accelerated skywards.

And Ezra had been left, alone, expecting death.

Only it turned out he was more useful to the Empire alive.

* * *

 **4 BBY - Imperial Shuttle** _ **Mistraal**_ **, Lothal System, Outer Rim**

Sabine opened her eyes. Her head was spinning. What had she been doing? Everything seemed fuzzy. What was the last thing she remembered? The Sienar factory… they had found the shuttle, and picked up some portable shield generators to boot, then... there had been a fight. Imperials!

She tried to sit up, but her muscles groaned in protest. She felt like she had been kicked in the ribs by a nerf. There had been someone new commanding the troops, she remembered. It was starting to come back to her. A tall figure in black armour, masked. He'd had a lightsaber, like the Inquisitor. She had tried to shoot him and… well that explained why she felt so terrible.

Someone was making noises of pain nearby. Short gasps, breathing fast. Sabine turned her head.

Kanan was slumped against the far wall, Hera sitting next to him with a med-kit spread out on the bench beside her. His face was screwed up in agony as Hera did something to… to the place where his arm _wasn't_. _Karabas_. She had seen it happen, but perhaps she hadn't wanted to remember. It all seemed so terrible. Everything had gone so _wrong_. They should have escaped, they should have rubbed the bucketheads' noses in their own incompetence like they always did, no-one should have gotten _hurt_ …

Zeb saw that she was awake, and came over to help her up, his big paws gently sliding her helmet off, leaving her hair mussed. "You okay?" he asked her softly.

"Yeah, I'll live." She looked around, checking to see if everyone else had made it away in one piece. Zeb and Hera were fine, there was Chopper lurking in the corner, but… "Where's Ezra?"

Everyone suddenly looked a lot more uncomfortable.

"We had to leave," Hera said eventually, her voice unsteady. "It was that, or we all died."

"You mean… we left Ezra back there!" Sabine shot to her feet, quickly regretting it as her vision went grey around the edges, and she felt herself sway as her head span with dizziness. Zeb steadied her. His ears were laid flat against his skull. He looked about as happy as she felt. "No, we have to go back for him!"

"We _will_ ," Kanan said through gritted teeth. "I'm not leaving him with that _thing_."

"Yeah, what _was_ that?" Sabine asked. "Another Inquisitor?"

"No. Something… worse. A Sith Lord. The ancient enemy of the Jedi. If he has Ezra…"

"We _will_ go back for him," Hera said. "But we need to know more first. That's why we're not leaving Lothal. Not yet."

"So where _are_ we going?" Sabine asked.

"To someone who is sneaky and underhand enough to get us the information we need."

Kanan groaned, although not from pain this time. "Calrissian."

* * *

 **4 BBY - Imperial Command Centre, Lothal, Lothal Sector, Outer Rim**

Ezra had expected to be killed, not taken captive. The moment the shuttle had taken off he had been surrounded by stormtroopers, the Inquisitor looming at their head. But instead of being shot he had been stunned, and the next he knew of it he was waking up in a prison cell. He wasn't sure exactly how long they had left him there. They didn't bother to feed him, but there was a sink he could drink from, and a toilet, and they had cuffed his arms in front of him.

After some time, a couple of bucketheads appeared, and he was escorted along a bunch of bland, grey, Imperial corridors and shoved inside an office which contained two familiar faces. One was Agent Kallus. The other was the blank mask of the new Inquisitor. He was an oppressive, heavy presence in the Force, but he didn't seem to be projecting that same cold and rage as he had during their fight. The noise of his respirator was very loud though, echoing throughout the room. It was so pervasive it was almost as if he could feel it under his skin, inside his head.

"So," Kallus said, sounding far too pleased with himself. "The rebel Ezra Bridger, also known as Specter Six." He smiled at Ezra's expression. "You see we _do_ know a little something about your band of terrorists."

"We're not terrorists," Ezra replied, not able to stop himself from protesting. Even despite his fear of the Inquisitor, wordless and menacing. "We're doing what we can to protect the people of Lothal from _you_."

"If it wasn't for rebels like yourself, there would be no need for harsh measures," Agent Kallus replied. "Obedience in return for protection. Is that so very much to ask?"

"Your protection isn't worth very much. Just look at Tarkintown!"

Kallus shrugged. "Non-humans," he said dismissively. "And trouble-makers. Little better than menaces like yourself. Generosity and mercy are only offered to those deserving of it."

"I'm guessing that doesn't include me," Ezra said. Had they just wanted to gloat before they killed him? Or was this all working up to something else?

"It could be, if you tell us the location of your friends, and of the Rebel Fleet in this sector," Kallus replied.

"That's never going to happen."

"You may change your mind after a little persuasion."

"Torturing the boy will not be necessary." The Inquisitor spoke at last. Menace dripped from every word. "The others will come for him. Their compassion is their weakness."

"No, they won't," Ezra said quickly. He realised he had broken out in a cold sweat. _Karabas_ , how was he so _terrifying_. "They know they'd be walking into a trap."

"No, _that_ has already happened," Agent Kallus told him. "The moment they boarded that shuttle. But as it happens, we don't actually _want_ them to come for you. It's much better for us that they run home to the Fleet, and lead us right to the _real_ prize."

"No…"

"Of course, as long as you're still alive, they won't do that," Kallus continued. "So we will have to make it clear that you are dead. A public execution should do nicely, don't you think?"

Ezra couldn't say anything. They were going to kill him, and broadcast it all over the holonet. Kanan, Hera, Sabine, Zeb… they would all be forced to watch it. _Everyone_ would. All of Lothal. They would be more afraid of the Empire than ever. They would lose what little hope they had been able to give them after the tower broadcast. And he was powerless to stop it.

He looked away. As he did so, his gaze fell on the Inquisitor's belt, and the lightsabers hanging there. Two… one of them was his own! If he could only get it, if he used the Force… If he attacked them here and now, even if he couldn't kill either of them, maybe they would be forced to kill him and then…

Even if he died, here, now, it wouldn't be the same as a public execution. He could spare his friends, his _family_ , that pain at least.

He reached out with the Force, reached out with his anger and his desperation towards the small clip where his saber hung and _pulled_ …

A hand in a leather glove reached out and pinned the weapon in place. The dark red lenses fixed their gaze upon him and Ezra shivered under that inhuman stare. "A valiant attempt," the harsh baritone said, in a way that might have been mocking. "He has potential. It appears the Jedi has not made him useless."

Agent Kallus nodded. "I shall see that he is transferred to your ship personally, Lord Vader. Once the execution has been recorded, of course."

Ezra hadn't believe it was possible to feel any worse, but he found that he was wrong. They were going to fake his death. And afterwards… He had no idea what this 'Vader' had planned for him, but he was sure he wasn't going to enjoy it.

* * *

 **0 ABY - Temple Ruins, Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

The moment Aphra saw the Inquisitor, she knew she had to kill him. It was far too much of a coincidence to think that he had shown up on this planet accidentally at the exact same time that Luke Skywalker, hero of the Rebel Alliance, was here, and that meant that someone had sent him. Vader had told her there were others after Skywalker, that Tagge had reassigned the Empire's search for the boy to someone else. It was reasonable to assume that that someone would have the authority to requisition an Inquisitor, particularly if they also knew Skywalker was able to use the Force.

The only thing that could reliably kill a Jedi was another Force-user, after all - although the kid wasn't really a Jedi. That's why the Inquisitorius existed in the first place.

But in this case there was only one Force-user that was allowed to have Skywalker, and that was Lord Vader. Aphra was well aware this was probably going to get her killed, but she had to stop him from getting his hands on the prize. If she failed… then Vader's plans failed. She had better _hope_ she was dead if that happened.

The red lightsaber deflected the shots from her blaster with infuriating ease. Aphra swore under her breath. Then the Inquisitor started to speak. Started to _negotiate._ He was making Skywalker an offer. Not one the boy would take, not under normal circumstances - she hadn't known him for long but that much was already obvious - but Force-users could get inside your head, play with your brain. Surely Skywalker would notice, surely _he_ of all beings would be able to resist but… She needn't have worried.

"My father was a Jedi," the boy said, defiantly, drawing… his _own_ lightsaber. "And so am I."

Kriff it! So he already knew what he was, or what he was capable of becoming. He already knew the kind of weapon the Rebellion could turn him into. Even setting aside what he had done in the past, Aphra could only imagine the sort of danger he could become if he continued on down this path. A Jedi could kill an army. The Jedi generals of the Clone Wars had been ruthless, without mercy, and utterly deadly. The Old Republic had dressed this up nicely with their propaganda when the Jedi Order benefited them. It had taken the Empire to reveal the unadorned truth behind the lies, and Darth Vader to eliminate the threat to the New Order.

Of course, the Empire had its own propaganda, and Aphra was smart enough not to believe _everything_ they claimed was true, but enough of it meshed with what little she remembered from the stories of her early childhood to make sense.

She was ambivalent about the Empire, but at least as a regime it knew how to be strong. She had nothing but contempt for the weakness of the Old Republic.

Skywalker and the Inquisitor were facing off, neither yet seeming willing to be the first to attack. Then the Inquisitor spoke again. "If he had a son, then clearly your father wasn't a very good Jedi," he said. "And that's a _good_ thing."

 _Aphra_ could have told him this was the wrong tack to take, and she wasn't exactly known for her diplomacy. As might have been expected, Skywalker got angry.

"My father was a great man," he snapped. "Before Darth Vader betrayed and killed him!"

Huh. Interesting. Aphra filed that piece of information away for later. She wasn't surprised by it; Vader was well known as a Jedi killer, although she wasn't sure how the concept of a betrayal fit into that. She couldn't imagine Vader, so devoted to his religion, having anything to do with the opposing cult of the Jedi. Something told her it was sure to have something to do with the bigger picture of Vader's plans that she was still putting together. She raised her blaster again, hoping to take advantage of the distraction Skywalker posed to get a shot off at the Inquisitor. But before she could fire, there was the snap of an electrical discharge, and the Inquisitor collapsed. On the step behind him was Skywalker's astromech droid, shock probe extended, beeping proudly.

 _Are we sure that thing's not related to BT-1?_ she asked herself. It was certainly old enough to have some pretty non-standard code. Pre-Clone Wars, at least.

Well, that made taking care of this problem a lot easier. She strode forwards, intending to take a point-blank shot at the Inquisitor's head, only for Skywalker to step in her way. He stared her down, insisting on keeping their enemy alive. And alright, maybe he did have a point about getting information out of him first, but honestly it would be safer for her own mission if they didn't talk. The Inquisitor might not know that she was connected to Vader, but she couldn't take the chance that he would reveal something that would compromise this tenuous connection.

But if she killed him, now, that would be certain to drive Skywalker away.

There was only one thing to do. She would have to hope that Lord Vader's _direct_ authority trumped the orders of some new and temporary master. She would have to make a call.

She gave in. "Fine. If you don't have the good sense nature gave a gundark, that's your problem. I'll look in my ship, see what I've got that we can use to tie him up before he comes to." And it would give her some time in private there.

Going out to the _Ark Angel_ , Aphra immediately went to the comms and sent out a hail on Vader's personal frequency. _Please_ let him be available to answer it. She would pray to whatever the Force was if that would help. But it turned out luck, or the Force, was on her side. The channel opened.

"Lord Vader," Aphra said, as the holoform of that impenetrable mask flickered into being. "We have a bit of a complication."

"For your sake Aphra, I hope nothing has happened to the boy."

"Not a scratch," she replied. "But not for want of someone trying. An Inquisitor turned up."

Even from millions of miles away, she could almost feel the temperature dropping. Perhaps she was simply getting used to reading his moods, especially his temper, which was on a hair-trigger as it was.

"I trust they have been eliminated," Vader said, or rather practically growled. Oh yes, _very_ angry.

"Skywalker's droid stunned him. Then the kid wouldn't even _let_ me kill him. So no. Unfortunately the Inquisitor is very much alive, and I can't do anything about that without losing our target's trust. I especially can't guarantee what this guy might or might not say when he wakes up."

Vader barely hesitated. "I am sending you my personal authorisation code. Ensure that the Inquisitor receives it, and promise him that if he acts against either of you in _any_ way, he will have to deal with _me._ "

"Great," Aphra said, feeling a lot more relaxed. "Problem solved, unless this guy is a lot crazier than he seemed."

Vader terminated the connection without another word. Left behind on the screen, a long alphanumeric code blinked steadily. Aphra copied it over to her data-pad, erasing the original afterwards. Tempting as it might be, she knew Vader wouldn't let her keep this any longer than she needed to have it.

Then she went to find the strongest cables she had. This Inquisitor wasn't going _anywhere_ before she had a chance to talk to him.

* * *

Luke clipped his father's lightsaber back to his belt, breathing heavily, more from emotion than exertion. "Well done Artoo," he said, looking up to where the little astromech stood over the stunned body of the stranger, shock-probe out and still buzzing. He felt shaky all over as the adrenaline drained out of him, still on edge after what the man had said to him. Ben had warned him about the Sith, about Darth Vader and the Emperor, but he had never mentioned that there were more of them out there than just those two. He turned to Aphra, who clearly knew more than he did about these 'Inquisitors', but she was already striding forwards with her blaster trained on the prone body, looking determined.

"Wait!" Luke shouted, darting forwards so that he was between the two of them. "Don't kill him!"

"In case you didn't notice kid, he was about to try to kill us," she told him. "And he's not going to be alone."

"I know, TIEs don't have hyperdrive," Luke said, impatiently. "I know he must have another ship somewhere, probably in orbit. But that means we need to know what he knows. He's our prisoner now."

"Keeping an Inquisitor prisoner is like playing with fire - not a good idea."

Luke didn't say anything. He knew this wasn't a good idea, but he wasn't about to stand aside and let someone be shot in cold blood. It just wasn't right. Even if he was angry with them, that wasn't any kind of justification. After a few long seconds, Aphra rolled her eyes at him and holstered her blaster.

"Fine. If you don't have the good sense nature gave a gundark, that's your problem. I'll look in my ship, see what I've got that we can use to tie him up before he comes to."

Luke relaxed. "Thank you Aphra."

He sat watching their prisoner while he waited for her to return. The man looked about his age, maybe a little older, with tan skin and hair dark enough to have a bluish sheen to it. He was wearing form-fitting black armour with Imperial Cogs painted onto both the shoulderpads. The lightsaber that he had drawn on them - which Luke had been quick to pick up - looked more like a blaster when it was turned off. Certainly nothing like any of the other sabers he had seen, even amongst Grakkus' collection. It had been red, like Vader's. And his eyes had looked to have a yellow tint, which was not exactly human-standard.

Aphra came back after some time with an armful of hauling cable that was usually used for reeling in smaller objects in space. She looped it around the Inquisitor's ankles and wrists, knotting it securely. "That should hold him for now," she said. "I guess now we just wait until he wakes up."

"What is an Inquisitor anyway?" Luke asked.

"Where did you grow up that you don't know that?" the smuggler asked him.

"Tatooine."

"Well that explains a lot. Look, he said most of this already, but if you're a kid who can do something the other kids can't, even if it's something small, the Empire sends you for special aptitude tests. And if you do well on _those_ … then an Inquisitor shows up. They ask all sorts of strange questions, and then they take some kids away with them, and those kids are never seen again. I guess they go off and become new Inquisitors. I did the first round of tests, but I guess I didn't have whatever it is exactly they're looking for."

"And they're all like… this one?"

"I wouldn't know," Aphra replied. "I've never met one before."

* * *

 **3 BBY - Plooma, Veragi Sector, Outer Rim**

Nothing had been the same since Ezra's death. It was his own fault. If he had been quicker, if he hadn't forgotten so much of his training in the years he had tried to pretend that he had never been a Jedi, Kanan might have been able to protect him. He had no illusions about his ability to actually defeat a Sith Lord - he was no General Kenobi or Skywalker, he knew that much - but he might have been able to hold him off long enough… But instead he had failed, lost an arm for his troubles, and as good as sentenced Ezra to death himself.

What right did he have to call himself a Jedi? What had he been thinking, taking on a Padawan when he had never been anything more than that himself? Had he really been arrogant enough to believe that he could teach Ezra enough to survive, when he _knew_ the dangers that were out there?

He kept remembering that day, when his world had fallen apart. His Master telling him to run. He had fled, and he had been running ever since. The Empire had destroyed the Jedi Order and he… he hadn't fought back. Hera had convinced him that he should do _something_ , but he had been too afraid to go as far as she wanted, do as much as she wanted. She had been the one to liaise with Fulcrum. She had been the one to insist they go to the Rebel Alliance. Kanan had…

He had been a failure. A coward.

Could he change that? Could he be any better than what he was, or was this all he was capable of?

That was why they were here, on Plooma. Because the Rebellion had sent them to strike a blow against the Empire. It was nothing they hadn't done dozens of times on Lothal, and this planet was just out-of-the-way enough to have similarly green and inexperienced troops garrisoning it, despite the fact that it was home to such an important military target. It was impossible for the Empire to buy too many TIEs and that meant Sienar couldn't build too many factories to churn them out. Factories ripe for destruction.

"Spectre 5, have you finished setting the charges?" Hera asked over their comms.

"Affirmative Specter 2," Sabine replied. "Let's blow this place."

"Okay. Specter 2 to all operatives. Meet back at the rendezvous point. Time to leave."

Kanan had finished his own task here some time ago, destroying the mainframe that controlled both the security and fire control systems. It would be impossible for anyone here to prevent this now, and their explosive devices would be free to wreak havok. Making his way towards the _Ghost_ , he reflected that his had been altogether too easy. There had been a low-level buzz moving through the Force ever since they arrived on this world, and as of yet he had found no cause for it. But his instincts told him that he would find out before they left. He had a bad feeling about this.

He was just crossing a gantry above the factory floor, the complicated machinery of the starfighter assembly line laid out below him, when the tingling became a scream. He whirled around to find that he wasn't alone. A gangly humanoid had just appeared in the doorway behind him. There was no mistaking that sleek black armour even without the Imperial cogs on the shoulderpads. An Inquisitor. He was masked, so there was no telling exactly what species he was, but the Empire usually kept their human agents for the Inner Ring and Core so the stuck-up xenophobic Imps there didn't get _offended_ about taking orders from a non-human.

There had been rumours that another Inquisitor had been assigned to hunt him down, so Kanan wasn't overly surprised by this. At least he had turned up _after_ they had completed their mission, or at least were close enough to doing so that it would be impossible to find and defuse the charges before the bombs went off.

Kanan drew his lightsaber and began backing carefully away along the gantry. The Inquisitor wasn't blocking his escape route, so there was still a chance that this might not come to open battle. Although his new arm was a good quality prosthesis, it was less responsive through the Force than his flesh arm, and he had found it difficult to integrate it into his sense of himself that allowed him to let the Force flow through him and guide his actions in battle. If you couldn't be sure where all of you was, you couldn't trust yourself in the acrobatics that were necessary for saber combat.

Still. The Inquisitor hadn't even drawn his own lightsaber yet. He approached cautiously, hands spread apart in a pacifying gesture. This was very unlike any of the Inquisitors they had met so far. The Pau'an had been arrogant, the Fifth Brother aggressive, and even the Seventh Sister had only talked in order to taunt him. What did this one want?

"Kanan!" the Inquisitor shouted. The voice had an electronic edge from the masked helmet, but there was still something… familiar… about it. He reached out with the Force, but the Dark Side was thick around the other, too thick to penetrate.

"SPECTRE has killed three of your _friends_ already!" Kanan replied, holding his saber at guard. "Back off, or you'll join them."

"Kanan, I just want to _talk_ ," the Inquisitor said. "About the Jedi, about the Light Side… I need you to know the _truth_."

"What are you talking about? Sith lies? The only truth I care about is that the Emperor had my friends, my _master_ , killed! That the Sith have constructed an Empire of evil, and we will do everything we can to see it brought down!"

The Inquisitor shook his head. "The Inquisitorius… the Sith… they've shown me what the Jedi were really like, in _their own words_. You were one of them once. You knew, even if they'd brainwashed you since birth not to see what they really were."

Kanan rolled his eyes. This was certainly a new tack, but frankly this was absurd. What were they expecting out of this? For him to renounce the Jedi in the shock of epiphany and _join_ them? To start terrorising the galaxy?

"The Jedi _stole children_ , Kanan. They tore them away from their parents, their families… away from everyone that _loved_ them. They turned them into emotionless killing machines, sent them out onto battlefields, onto planets full of a hundred dangers they were far too young for! You should know…"

"I _don't_ know," Kanan interrupted him. He'd heard enough of this nonsense. This was Imperial propaganda, plain and simple, and he'd heard more than enough of it in the years after the Empire was founded. Turn people against the Jedi Order and they were more than willing to turn in what few survivors there were. "And don't claim you can know _anything_ about me or what I've been through."

The Inquisitor's head tilted to the side. "Do you really not know who I am?" he asked.

"Should I?"

"Haven't you _looked_?" When Kanan said nothing, the Inquisitor reached up to touch a hidden release on his helmet and the panels slid aside to reveal…

"No." The word fell from Kanan's lips before he could stop it. Ezra… But it couldn't be. He was dead, they had all _seen_ him die, cut down by the firing squad on Lothal… But it was, Ezra had grown but he hadn't grown _that_ much. Kanan would know him anywhere. If the Dark Side hadn't cloaked that familiar presence in the Force...

"The Jedi weren't what you thought," Ezra said. "They weren't what you told me. This way… it's not easy, but eventually I'll be able to change things. Change the system. Make the galaxy a better place. You could do that too. Come with me, see what they've shown me, and I _know_ you'll understand."

Kanan didn't know what answer he would have given to that. He didn't have time to come up with one, because it was at that moment that the bombs went off.

Fire erupted from the factory below. Shrapnel whined through the air, and one particularly large piece of shapeless metal came whirring up through the gantry between them, leaving the steel lattice in tatters and opening a gaping hole. Ezra took a step back, flames reflecting in his eyes, giving them a tint of yellow… or perhaps they had been like that before but Kanan hadn't wanted to see it. He spat that familiar Lasat curse they had all picked up from Zeb.

Kanan's comms crackled. "Spectre 1!" It was Hera's voice, screaming. "Spectre 1, where are you?"

Kanan tried to speak and found his mouth was too dry. He swallowed, his throat rough, then managed to force some words out. "On a gantry above the factory floor."

"Don't move," Hera ordered. "We'll come and get you."

Kanan had no time to ask how; a flurry of blaster fire erupted from the hanger door at the end of the building and the _Phantom_ barrelled through the opening left behind, soaring over the raging fires towards him and making a tight mid-air turn so the rear hatch - already open - pointed his way. Kanan shook himself out of his shock and made the jump, landing lightly on the small platform.

Left behind - _just as you left him behind before, left him to the Inquisitorius_ , Kanan told himself - Ezra turned away to make his own escape from the crumbling factory.

Kanan made his way through the _Phantom_ to take the co-pilot's seat next to Hera.

"Are you okay?" she asked him. "What happened down there? Another Inquisitor?"

"I'll tell you when we get back to the _Ghost_ ," Kanan replied.

* * *

 **0 ABY - Temple Ruins, Vrogas Vas**

Ezra - no, the _Twelfth Brother_ \- woke up. For a moment he had almost forgotten himself. That was a part of him he had left far behind. He was lying on a flat stone surface, and as soon as he tried to move, he quickly became aware that someone had tied him up like a Life-Day roast. Strong cables, and strong knots as well. Even picking at them with the Force, he couldn't see himself working loose anytime soon.

"Hey, Inquisitor," someone said from right next to him.

He turned his head. It was the smuggler from earlier. _Karabas_. He hadn't thought to look for droids, and even if he had they weren't easy to detect in the Force. The one who shot him had been easy to miss because of how _bright_ that padawan boy was. Overconfidence, he thought to himself. Warned yourself about that. Speaking of, said padawan wasn't here, or at least, he wasn't in this room right now. Good. If he waited for the right moment...

"Here, pay attention," the smuggler said. She was holding a datapad, and as he looked back to her she held it up so he could see it.

Oh. Oh, this was very bad.

That was _Darth Vader's_ authorisation code. Which meant he had just stumbled into an operation he _definitely_ didn't have the clearance for, and had probably gone a long way towards cocking it up too. He did his best to look apologetic.

"So here's how it's going to be," the smuggler told him. "I'm Doctor Aphra, droid archaeologist, coder, smuggler, and working _directly_ for Lord Vader. The kid is Luke Skywalker, and he's going to be leading us all the way to the main Rebel Fleet if I play my cards right. _You_ are in a kriff-load of trouble and are going to keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you. Understand?"

The Twelfth Brother nodded. He really didn't trust himself not to say something that would dig him even deeper into this nice hole he'd made for himself.

"So who sent you?" Aphra asked, conversationally. "Tagge? That Mon-Calamari cyborg, what's his name, Karbin?"

"Uh, neither," he replied nervously. "This was meant to be a standard mission. I had no idea either of you two were here before I saw your ships."

"Do you really expect me to believe that?" Aphra asked scornfully. "A little too much of a coincidence, don't you think?"

"There is no coincidence, there is the Force," the Brother replied automatically. It was a saying that held just as true for the Dark Side as the Light.

Aphra sneered. "I suppose if you want to keep that much to yourself for now I don't really care. It isn't me you'll have to deal with in the end, and you of all sentients should know what Lord Vader is like as an interrogator. All I want from you is to know that you won't mess this up. Say nothing to the boy about any of this. Don't touch him, don't _think_ about touching him, don't even go near him if you can help it. If he asks you questions, answer him, but keep the answers as short as possible. He's Vader's prize when this is over."

"I get the idea. So," he said, gesturing with his bound wrists, "are you going to let me up?"

"Of course not. The kid wants to talk to you first. Find out what you're doing here and who you've brought with you. Stick with the bantha-fodder story you tried on me just now, it'll work on him. And no Force funny-business."

As soon as he nodded his agreement, she was on her comm. "Better come back Luke," she said. "He's awake."

* * *

 **0 ABY - Temple Ruins, Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

Luke entered the sleeping chambers to find Aphra standing guard over their prisoner, who looked a lot less intimidating tied to a bed. The young man was scowling, but not at Aphra or him, just at life in general and this situation in particular. Luke recognised that look. It was one he'd worn a lot on Tatooine when he wanted to go out with his friends and instead had to stay home to harvest water from the converters. The position he was trussed up in didn't look too comfortable either, but then, he _had_ been trying to kill them. A little discomfort was alright. It was killing him that Luke objected to.

As he approached, he checked that the two lightsabers clipped to his belt were properly secured. After Vader had pulled his saber away from him with the Force so easily on the factory moon, he had become more careful.

"Has he said anything yet?" he asked Aphra. She shrugged.

"He's pretty tight-lipped," she replied, shooting a glare at the Inquisitor. Luke sighed. He didn't really have a plan for what to do about their prisoner. He still wasn't finished with the Temple, not by a long shot, but they couldn't just keep this guy around while he searched it. What if his ship came looking for him? What if he managed to escape? He'd entertained some ideas about making the Inquisitor check in with his friends to tell them everything was fine, after he told them why he was here, but Luke knew he wasn't exactly the most convincing person in the galaxy.

He might as well give it a try though. No harm in that.

"What's your name?" he asked.

The Inquisitor said nothing. Aphra tapped the blaster holstered at her side with a meaningful expression. "The kid asked you a question."

"I'm the Twelfth Brother," the Inquisitor said reluctantly.

"That's not a name," Luke protested. "What do your friends call you? You might be an Imp, but you've gotta have friends."

The Inquisitor scowled. Maybe not. Maybe Sith _didn't_ have friends. Luke couldn't imagine Darth Vader hanging out in the mess of a Star Destroyer, or going out drinking on shore leave. If he even could drink, in that suit he wore. After another glare from Aphra though, the Inquisitor said, "Ezra. Bridger. That's the name I _used_ to have, before I became an Inquisitor. The name of a naive boy, who knew nothing of the world."

That was probably aimed as a dig at him, Luke thought. But he didn't really care about being thought of as naive. "So. Ezra," he said. "Are you here because of me?"

"I don't even know who you are, apart from a rebel and an untrained padawan," Ezra replied. Luke thought back to how he had felt Aphra's intentions earlier and tried to repeat the trick. It was easier the second time; he remembered how it had felt. The Force felt strange around the Ezra; thick, almost oily, and strangely cold. It made it harder to tell what he was feeling, but Luke felt pretty confident that he was telling the truth. "I came here because of the temple."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

Ezra rolled his eyes. "It's a Jedi Temple," he explained. "The Jedi philosophy is corrupt, a plague on the galaxy. That's why their Order had to be destroyed, and why the Inquisitorius has been tasked with eliminating all traces of their teaching that remain."

Luke had to bite back his anger. How dare they?! He knew the Empire was destructive, he knew that the Emperor was the root of all their evil, that he and Darth Vader had been behind everything that had happened, killing his father, driving Ben Kenobi into exile, murdering his aunt and uncle… he just hadn't imagined how far their hate would take them. No wonder it had been so hard to find out anything about the Jedi, about his father. No wonder the holonet had been scoured clean of any reference to them, obvious Imperial propaganda aside.. If an entire branch of Imperial Forces were dedicated to that… if all of them were Sith…

But turning that anger on the Inquisitor in front of him wasn't going to help anything. He needed to persuade Ezra to do what he wanted, and that wasn't going to happen if he shouted at him.

Luke was observant; Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru might have tried to shelter him from the dangers of Tatooine, particularly those posed by its criminal element, he had still learned a little something from those trips with his friends to Mos Eisley. The best smugglers and bounty hunters didn't throw their weight around to get what they wanted. They spoke softly and quietly, and let their reputation do most of the work. Not that Luke had any kind of reputation with the Inquisitor - not without giving out his full name, and that result of that wouldn't be the kind of reputation he wanted. But he could do the first two.

"I came to this temple to learn about the Jedi and about the Force," he said. "So you can see why I'm not going to let you do what _you_ came here to do."

"I can see that much," Ezra replied, rolling his shoulders to demonstrate that oh yeah, he was still tied up. "But I'm telling you the truth if you would only _listen_. The Jedi weren't heroes. Maybe if you've got some sense you'll find something here that'll make you _see_ that."

In the Force, Luke could feel his conviction. He really believed what he was saying, what he had claimed earlier as well in their fight. Of course, he would. That didn't mean anything. Even the worst Imperial, even _Darth Vader_ , surely didn't _know_ how terrible they were or they would stop. People could do horrible things and they justified it to themselves somehow.

"I believe that _you_ believe it," he said. "Anyway, that's the only reason you were here? To destroy the temple. How? Explosives? Call in an orbital strike?"

"That's a little over the top," the Inquisitor replied. "No. The building itself doesn't matter, but there's bound to be something the Jedi left further inside." He shrugged. "At least you came to the right place. But you can't go in, right? It won't let you."

Luke scowled at him. "How did you know?"

"Because it's obvious the only training anyone has given you is how to hold that lightsaber of yours. You're strong, but you're fumbling around in the dark. Holocrons aren't going to cut it. If you want to learn to use the Force, you should let me go and come with me. The only sure way to learn is to learn _from_ someone, and the Sith are the only ones left."

"And I'm just supposed to take your word for it?" Luke asked.

"Trust your feelings," Ezra replied. "Trust your instincts. You already know it's true."

"Sounds like bantha-shit to me," Aphra said. "How about you stick to things we can actually _prove_ , huh?"

Luke tried not to let his frustration be too obvious. It _was_ true that he hadn't learned very much from Master Phin-Law Wo's holocron, and that he hadn't had any luck so far in reaching the inner depths of the temple. But he hadn't been here long, and he had Aphra to help him now.

"When is your ship expecting you to check in?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Not any time soon," Ezra replied. "Searching a temple from top to bottom isn't a quick task."

Aphra smirked. "Then what's to stop us from killing you now you've told us that, and getting on with things?" she asked - rhetorically, Luke hoped.

Ezra returned her smile. "If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already," he said. "Don't try to hide it; this padawan here doesn't have the stomach for killing."

Aphra let out a small bark of laughter, although Luke couldn't see why. He would have thought it was just part of the bluff, but that wasn't what the Force was telling him. And she regretted it… for some reason. He shook his head. It didn't matter right now.

"You keep calling me a padawan," he said. "Why?"

"That was what the Jedi called the children they stole when they sent them out onto the battlefield," the Inquisitor replied, with venom.

"What do you mean?" That made no sense. Probably Imperial propaganda. What little Luke _had_ managed to find about Jedi on the holonet had been clearly only that; he hadn't read it. Perhaps he should have, just to see what sort of lies people like Ezra were being fed.

Ezra shook his head. "You won't believe me. I can feel it - you think I've been brainwashed. That they lied to me. I heard these things from Jedi holocrons kept under lock and key on Mustafar. The Jedi didn't hide what they did, what they believed. They just had everyone fooled into thinking that was the only possible way to use the Force, and they suppressed, supplanted and destroyed every other Force tradition in the galaxy for generations!"

"If you can feel that much of my thoughts," Luke replied, fighting to keep his calm, "then you can feel that I'm going to decide this for myself. Once I get into the temple's heart, then I'll see what the Jedi artifacts show. Perhaps it will agree with you, but I don't think so."

Ezra was clearly thinking about something. He glanced over at Aphra, who had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout all of this. Luke hadn't known her very long, but it was obvious that she usually had something to say about everything. But the Force was… well, even a smuggler and an archaeologist wouldn't know much about the Force. Han didn't, and he had been born before the Clone Wars. Aphra certainly had too. There was a long moment of silence, and then Ezra seemed to decide.

"If you really will believe the evidence of your own eyes and ears… if that's what it takes for me to persuade you… then I'll help you."

"What?" Aphra shouted, losing her composure for a second..

"You'll… what?" Luke didn't know how to react.

"I'll help you," Ezra repeated. "To get into the center of the temple. Of course," he added, "if it makes it easier for you and your friend here to accept, please do assume I have plenty of ulterior motives for this - beyond the obvious, I mean."

"No," Aphra said immediately. "Absolutely not. That's a terrible idea and we are not doing it."

That's what Luke might have thought too at first, but he wasn't really so sure. He trusted the Force, even if he didn't have enough experience with it to be confident that he was reading its eddies and currents correctly, but he could feel it nudging him, telling him that this was the path he ought to take. If they did this, then something good would come of it. The Force was less specific about what.

"Wait," he said. "Let's think about this. Even if the ship isn't expecting to hear from him soon, if we have to spend a few days finding our own way into the temple, that's going to change. We don't have much time. This is a chance to get what we need now, and get out."

"He's going to double-cross us!" Aphra shouted. "You _cannot_ be this naive!"

"You came here to hide from the Empire," Luke said. "And obviously Ezra coming here means you'll have to leave, go somewhere else, but you might at least get _something_ out of it, right?" He was hoping that, like Han when they'd first met him, the promise of credits would be the best way to persuade her that this was the right thing to do.

"Nothing's worth _dying_ , Luke," Aphra said, clearly furious. "I'd like to live to _spend_ all these credits I put my ass on the line for!"

Ezra was watching them calmly. He seemed to be willing to wait and see how this played out. Or maybe he was worried Aphra would just shoot him if he said anything more - she was angry enough right now that Luke wouldn't entirely put it past her.

"The Force is telling me we should do this," he said, trying another tactic.

Aphra rolled her eyes. "The Force is the Force, whatever! Did you maybe think that _he's better at it than you_? If there's any way to lie using the Force, I can bet he'd know it."

"I don't think the Force works that way," Luke said, a little hesitant. Ben had never mentioned anything like that, he'd always said to trust the Force, but then Ben hadn't told him a lot of things. He hadn't had _time_ to tell him a lot of things.

"But you don't _know_ , do you," Aphra said, sensing victory and looking triumphant. "No, what we should be doing is leaving this guy right here, since you won't kill him, and high tailing it off this planet. There's bound to be other mud-balls out there where you can learn about the Jedi, and in the meantime, don't you have the Rebel Alliance to get back to?"

"No," Luke replied resolutely. "I'm not leaving. I don't know that I'm going to get another chance and I _need_ to know about whatever's inside the temple."

Aphra made a wordless noise of frustration. Her glare was white-hot, but Luke had seen scarier. Mostly from Leia, come to think of it…

"You don't have to stay," Luke continued. "If you want to leave, you should. This isn't your fight."

"And leave you alone with this guy? No chance," Aphra replied. "I'd rather not have your death on my conscience, thanks ever so much."

"If you're staying, then we're going with my plan. Ezra's plan, I mean."

"Are all Rebels as nerf-headed as you?"

"Some of them."

"Then fine!" Aphra said, then turned her glare on Ezra. "And I'll be watching _you_ every step. Make a move, and the blaster bolt to your spine will be the last thing you ever know."

"Trust me," Ezra said with a smirk. "The feeling's mutual."

* * *

She could not _believe_ this kid! What kind of arrogant _idiot_ would trust an _Inquisitor_ , would just… let them go free to wander around murdering them whenever they felt like it! This was literally the worst plan she had ever heard of in her life, and Aphra was including in that some of the questionable ones she had made when she was first starting out in this line of work. Kriff, how in all the stars and heavens was she going to keep this guy alive long enough for Vader to get his hands on him?

She tried to calm herself with the reminder that Bridger had seen Vader's code, that he couldn't possibly be as stupid as Skywalker was, and therefore wasn't about to _actually_ kill them both. Small comfort. If only she'd had some warning of where that conversation might go beforehand, then she could have ordered the Inquisitor not to speak about the Temple or about Force-stuff at all. Instead he had taken advantage of the fact that she couldn't interrupt without giving the game away to lead them off on this goose-chase, keep them here until… what? There must be some kind of plan in this.

Keep them here until reinforcements arrived, in the form of whoever had sent him in the first place? If it was Karbin or Tagge, then that was just about the only thing that stood a chance of saving Bridger from Lord Vader's wrath. So perhaps that _was_ it. She couldn't see any other legitimate reason. Certainly Bridger couldn't really hope that this would somehow lead Skywalker to join them or go over to the 'Dark Side'. Not after what he'd revealed during their fight.

Could he?

She watched as Luke drew his lightsaber just long enough to cut through the cabling keeping the Inquisitor tied up, deactivating it and clipping it back onto his belt quickly. Bridger took some time to stretch and work the kinks out of his muscles from being confined in one position. He gave her an awkward smile that might have been meant as conciliatory, but she was having none of it.

She was going to have to be quick and clever and think on her feet if she wanted to get herself and the kid out of this in one piece.

Ezra was seriously questioning his own sense of self-preservation. He'd seen the code, he knew who Doctor Aphra was working for. The smart thing would have been to do just what she asked and keep his answers short and sweet, and not go off talking about the Force, about the Jedi, and _absolutely_ not volunteering to _help_ the padawan. _Why_ had he done that? To be honest, the only reason he could give himself was that it had just… felt right.

It wasn't anything the padawan had done - he might be powerful, but even he wasn't strong enough to perform Jedi mind manipulation unconsciously. No, this had been something else, something more subtle. The Force itself. He didn't claim to be particularly attuned to either the will of the Force, or the wills of the Sith made manifest through the Dark Side, but he had still felt it. The Dark Side had been whispering to him, deep down, saying that this boy was someone important, that he should stay close to him. He would even say that it had been strangely… protective? But that didn't make any sense. This Skywalker boy had already proclaimed his allegiance to the Jedi, and he seemed very firm in his convictions.

Although hadn't Ezra been like that once? And he had still been able to learn better in time, with guidance. So perhaps what he was feeling was _potential_. That _if_ Skywalker were to fall to the Dark Side, then he could be a truly great Sith.

Either way, he had already made this promise, and he had better hold to it.

* * *

 **0 ABY - Nar Shaddaa, Y'Toub system, Hutt Space**

In the end, Inspector Thanoth had been easier to dispose of than he had expected. After losing Aphra despite the trap that had been set for her and the seeming impossibility of escape, the Inspector had not been presented in the best light. As Vader had had no knowledge of that particular aspect of the plan, when Tagge called the both of them to account, it was easy enough to shift the blame. Since Tagge had been in a foul mood in any case - for that pitiful pair of false-Inquisitors Morit and Aiolin had also failed in their task of eliminating the Plasma Devils - he had been in no mood for mercy.

So that had been the last of Inspector Thanoth. A pity in some ways - he could have been useful, if the circumstances had been different.

For the moment however, Vader had one more task to complete for Tagge before he would find himself free to travel to Vrogas Vas and retrieve his son. Perhaps Tagge meant to throw him this scrap because he feared Vader's temper might heat to a boiling point were he not to be indulged a little, or perhaps it was meant as a taunt. It mattered little - Vader welcomed this mission. Apparently his son had run into some difficulties on Nar Shaddaa prior to travelling to Vrogas Vas and now he would have the pleasure of interrogating a Hutt to find out what information he might have gleaned about his son during their brief contact.

Although his pleasure was short-lived. Tagge had not seen fit to inform him of the precise _nature_ of that contact.

How _dare he_! How _dare_ this _slug_ even _think_ of presuming to ownership of his son! His child was free, had been born _free_ , should never have known the pain, the indignity of being a slave. And of course it _would_ have been a Hutt. Vader remembered Hutts. He remembered Gardulla. He remembered how they treated their _property_.

Sergeant Kreel - once of his own 501st, long since seconded to the ISB and the Inquisitorius due to his particular talents - finished his recounting of the events with clear hesitancy. Vader could feel his apprehension, verging on fear. He did not know how to interpret Vader's silence, but the slight degree of Force-sensitivity he possessed was sure to leave him aware of the white-hot rage that was burning within him right now, drawing the Dark Side with it. It was filling the room, a heavy blanket of power summoned by his hate, thirsting to obey his will.

Grakkus sat in the corner of the room that held his treasures, chained and under heavy guard. His cybernetic legs had been de-activated.

Tagge would be angry if he killed him. The Emperor would be angry. The Hutts were too powerful and too useful to take action against in this way, even though this _sleemo_ had been collecting forbidden Jedi artefacts. That wouldn't be enough of an excuse.

Vader did not care.

Grakkus did not deserve a quick death. Choking would be too swift for the likes of him. But this was a room full of weapons. And the Dark Side was eager to allow him to use them.

When the crate lid slid open, the stormtroopers stirred nervously. When a dozen lightsabers floated up out of it they took a step backwards. Grakkus chuckled, but Vader could feel his terror. "Of course, these artifacts are the Empire's now," the Hutt said, fat tongue slithering over his lips. "I am sure you will deal with them as…"

The sabers activated in mid-air. The first two took the slug's arms off at the shoulder. His screams mixed pleasingly with the shocked cries of the troopers. Vader stalked closer, hand raised, directing the movements of the blades dancing around the Hutt. The slaver recovered enough to croak out some pitiful, useless protests; that he could not do this, not to someone as important as Grakkus, that he had allies, that Vader would make enemies the Empire would not want. He ignored them. The words were unimportant. All that was important was that the Hutt suffer.

Slowly, methodically, from the tail upwards, Darth Vader began to carve up the creature that had dared to threaten his son.

* * *

 **0 ABY, Temple Ruins, Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

Ezra was wasting no time in making good on his promise. As the padawan had pointed out, his ship was not going to wait forever to hear from him, and although it would be easy enough to contact them and order them to stay well away from this kriff-storm of a mission, it would be a lot harder to make that action believable to the boy. Luke, that had been the name Doctor Aphra had given him. Luke Skywalker.

Ezra frowned. That name was familiar somehow. As though he had heard it in a story a very long time ago.

Well, no time to go digging through his memories trying to work it out, at least not right now when he had much more immediate problems to worry about. Besides, sometimes these things came quicker when you just let them be worked out subconsciously. All that mattered was that Luke was Lord Vader's target, that he was a member of the Rebel Alliance, and that Aphra's mission seemed to be to use him to infiltrate the Rebel Fleet. That Luke was also a padawan seemed just a secondary bonus right now, although no doubt that killing him or turning him would please Lord Vader when he brought the inevitable strike force crashing down on the Rebels.

Would it please him more if he arrived to find that the boy had already made the first steps towards joining the Dark Side? Ezra really hoped so. It was likely to be the only thing that would save his neck.

Luke was currently leading their little group through the temple passages to the deepest point he had thus far been able to reach. He and Ezra were at the front, that little astromech droid directly behind them with his shock-probe extended in case of any 'funny business', and Doctor Aphra was bringing up the rear with a rucksack full of light-emitters and a scowl aimed at Ezra's back. So far there hadn't been any opportunity for her to get him alone, but the moment there was, Ezra was sure he was not going to enjoy what followed.

He pushed the thought out of his mind. Focus. The Force was strong here, the Light Side especially so. The Jedi here would have cultivated it over the years, although the presence of a large group of Force-users tended to leave a residue of themselves upon any place they spent a considerable time anyway. Just take Mustafar as an example; the whole planet was enveloped in the Dark Side. It barely took the slightest brush of anger to reach out and touch it. Of course, the original Jedi inhabitants of this world would have been from a time when the Old Order was much more spread out, before they decided to consolidate their power in the political centre of the galaxy, no doubt so that they could better manipulate events to their liking. The temple had lain long abandoned, and the Force was beginning to return to a wilder, less focused state.

And even in the strongest stronghold of the Light, the Dark was always there. It just required more from you to come to your call.

They were coming up onto a place where the Force became thicker. Luke stopped them at an intersection of several passages. He looked… unfocused. His Force-presence, still ridiculously strong, was pulsing as though uncertain.

"Here," he said, sounding apologetic. "Here's where it starts to have this effect on me… I just get all turned around. I think I'm taking the right passage, but I just end up right back where I started. I tried marking them, but it didn't seem to matter."

Ezra reached out his senses, feeling the shape of the Force here. He could see what Luke meant. The Force was like a barrier here, meant to confuse, to turn aside those who sought to enter. It was easy enough to push it away if you knew what it was. It wasn't a lack of willpower the padawan was lacking, just the training to know what to do with it.

"I don't feel any different," Aphra said from behind him, a little too close to be comfortable.

"You wouldn't," Ezra replied. "This is only meant as a barrier to Force-sensitives. The dangers ahead wouldn't be of any concern to those who can't use the Force. But the reason it's here is as a test. If you can get past this, then you are ready to face what comes next. If you aren't ready, then this will protect you from walking right into trouble."

Luke's resolve wavered for a moment, then firmed again. It was amazing how little shielded he was. It was only the sheer strength of him that prevented Ezra reading every flicker of emotion that went across his mind - it was a bit overwhelming to look that close.

If he had lived anywhere less remote than Tatooine, there would have been _no_ chance he could have gone unnoticed to the Inquisitorius. They would have sensed him from _orbit_.

"So tell me how to make myself ready," Luke said.

"Wait just one minute," Aphra said behind them, clearly angry. "Didn't Bridger _just_ _say_ that going further without being properly trained was dangerous? I didn't stick around to watch you get killed by some vague Force trap Luke!"

"I don't think the Jedi would have filled one of their Temples with deadly traps though," Luke protested.

Ezra rolled his eyes. "Of course they would," he replied. "The Jedi Trials of Knighthood weren't a _walk in the park_. If you failed, that was it. Although to them failure meant a lot of different things."

"What do you mean?"

"Not just not being strong enough," Ezra answered. "The trials also tested the padawan's adherence to their philosophy. Playing on their emotions, trying to make them use the Dark Side. If they did, they failed, and they would be trapped forever. Until, I'm gonna assume, they died from lack of food and water."

"And you're willing to lead me into that?" Luke asked skeptically. "Won't you end up trapped, using the Dark Side?"

"That's why I'm relying on you," Ezra admitted. "I'm hoping your strength is going to win out over lack of training. Although if it doesn't, then I know how to use the Dark Side properly, which is more than could be said of any Jedi who fell into using it by accident during a trial. I think that should be enough to get us both out. And if we _do_ end up trapped, then Aphra can pull us out. Seeing as she won't be affected by anything in there."

"If I have to pull anyone out, I'm leaving _you_ in there," Aphra replied with heat.

Ezra shrugged. "Luke'll make you rescue me," he replied. "I hope."

"It's not going to come to that," Luke said, clearly trying to be diplomatic. "Now, let's get on with this. How do I get past the barrier?"

Ezra sighed. "It's… not something you can _explain_ , or a holocron could do it. It's much easier to show you."

"Show me by using the Dark Side?"

"I don't know how to do it any other way," Ezra said, although… that wasn't quite true. He remembered there had been the temple on Lothal. He remembered… but all that was in the past. It belonged to a person who wasn't him anymore. "Just… reach out and _feel_ what I'm doing."

He took a deep breath, in then out, and centered himself. Here he was, the Twelfth Brother, and he _knew_ himself. He was anger, anger at a galaxy which had not allowed him to be strong enough to protect those he loved, not until it was too late. He was anger that became power, became justice. He was a weapon in his own hands, an instrument of his own will. He was the darkness, forged and made solid, a blade to cut through that which was unimportant down to what _mattered_. He was, and the Force was how he was manifest in the world.

Doubts didn't matter. Uncertainty didn't matter. Confusion didn't matter.

Forget the unimportant. Let it burn away in the fires of anger, leaving only the cold core that was you.

And then walk through the mists of disorientation and distraction to the truth that was on the other side.

Ezra stepped forwards, through the gateway to the temple depths, to the other side of the barrier, with the Dark Side wrapped around him like a cloak. Then he turned back, to see Luke watching him with intense concentration, clearly fighting the effect that told him that Ezra was no longer there, that nothing was there and that he should turn back and return to the outskirts of the temple.

"I think… I think I understand," the padawan said quietly. "I think I can do it. Do it my way, I mean."

This would be interesting to see. Ezra let some of the purity of the Dark Side slip away - it wasn't easy to maintain that certainty of self and purpose for long without some sort of goal to aim towards - and leaned against the wall to watch. Luke approached the gateway, stopping just shy of the edge of the barrier, and sank to his knees in a meditative pose. He closed his eyes, and reached out into the Force.

It had been hard to look at the brightness of his Force presence before - it was far worse when he was actively trying. Ezra had to withdraw into himself for his own protection, hiding behind his own shields. The padawan was calling the Force to him, unlike a Jedi who would have only opened himself up and allowed the Force to come or not as it willed, but he wasn't calling on the Dark Side - at least, he wasn't calling on anything using his anger, or his hate, both of which Ezra knew he had within him. What was he thinking about, in there? What was this boy's sense of himself?

It was becoming almost impossible to tell where Luke ended and the Force began in the wash of it that surrounded him, that surrounded all of them now. Still with his eyes closed, Luke slowly got to his feet and walked forwards, the barrier wrapping around him as he went. He didn't so much penetrate it as slip through it. Then the Force gradually drained away, and Luke opened his eyes, blinking.

"It worked!" he exclaimed, grinning enthusiastically.

Ezra didn't reply. Luke didn't seem to have any idea how strong he was, how _strange_ he was, how different. Just what _was_ this boy?

"Well done both of you on walking forwards ten feet," Aphra called to them, although Ezra could tell it was meant as gentle teasing. "So can I come join you now or what?" She didn't wait for a reply, but started approaching before Ezra could object.

"I'm not sure that's the best idea," he said. "The tests won't affect you directly, but that doesn't mean _we_ will be safe to be around when we're caught up in them. We might not recognise you - or we might think you're someone else entirely."

"So I'll hang back a bit," Aphra replied. "But if you think I'm waiting for you out here, well…" She gave him a meaningful look.

"Thank you Aphra," Luke said. "I feel better knowing you're going to be around."

Ezra sighed. Luke was going to get a nasty shock when he found out who Aphra was working for, that was for sure. "Let's get going then."

The corridor stretched out ahead of them, enveloped in shadow. He could feel the anticipation in the Force, the feeling of being watched, of the curiosity of that not-quite-sentience. Or sentience on some other level very far apart from that of humanity. The old Jedi had set forth their commandments to it, their criteria, and the Force was still following them all these centuries later.

He led the way onwards, towards the tests he knew were coming.


	2. Chapter 2

**0 ABY - YT-1300** _ **Millenium Falcon**_ **, docked at Alliance operating base** _ **Silent Shadow**_ **, Outer Rim**

Now that the business with Sana was finally over and done with, Leia was looking forwards to getting back to work. There always seemed to be more to do when it came to the Rebellion, particularly in the wake of the destruction of the Death Star and the new hope it had given to their cause. Resources, ships, people; they were all flocking to their cause, and many planets she might never have suspected of helping them now harboured whispers of support - only whispers, but those would grow.

And it was easiest to throw herself into work. Much easier than dwelling on loss, on pain. Her family, her world… She couldn't think about it. If she started to, then she wouldn't be able to stop, and then what would happen to everyone who was depending on her? She had to be strong enough, and if that meant shutting down the past and focusing on the now, then she would do it.

Besides, this was the Rebel Alliance. Everyone here had lost something to the Empire. Her loss might be greater than most, but it was one shared by every citizen of Alderaan remaining in the galaxy.

The _Silent Shadow_ had been the nearest base she knew once they had dropped off Sana. It was an old scientific research station, long abandoned prior to the Rebellion repurposing it, and had last seen use during the Clone Wars. It was not in the best of shape, but the long-range listening equipment was still functional, and was proving useful to them in intercepting Imperial transmissions, even if cracking their codes was rather more of a challenge. That same equipment also served to co-ordinate and pass on signals from a number of Rebel bases in this sector and even further afield, rerouting them through gaps in the holonet that would prevent any trace of their original location from being identifiable. At the moment, Leia was waiting to hear back from Mon Mothma with the main fleet. She was unsure as yet what orders they might have for her. Whatever it turned out to be, she hoped she could rely on Solo to take her where she was needed - at least until he met up again with his partner Chewbacca. He continued to insist that he was only staying with the Alliance until the end of the next mission - and then the next mission, and then the next. His reluctance wasn't fooling anyone, but he was still… unpredictable.

Leia's personal comm bleeped an alert. There was a connection waiting for her on-station. She rose from where she had been sitting thinking - not brooding, she told herself, _thinking_ \- and headed for the communications hub. When she got there, a brief word with the base commander brought her some much needed privacy, and she accepted the link. Mon Mothma's face flickered into being from the holoprojector.

"Princess Organa," Mon said. "I hope you are well."

"As well as could be expected," Leia replied. "I will feel better as soon as I can get back to doing what's really important."

"As to that, something has come to light which could use your skills and the skills of Captain Solo. We have received some intelligence that could be of extreme importance, but the source is… questionable at best." 

"Questionable how?" Leia asked.

"We are almost certain that it was passed on to us by an Imperial Agent."

"Then why are we even having this conversation? Whatever it is is clearly a trap."

"We would have thought the same," Mon explained, "except that we believe this information was given to us as part of infighting amongst the Imperial ranks - that the Rebellion is expected to act on it as a tool of one party against another. And the party we are being set against is none other than Darth Vader."

A sharp stab of fierce rage shot through her. Vader. That monster. After what he had done to her, after what he had allowed to happen to all those innocent people on Alderaan… if there was any chance that the Alliance might be able to eliminate him then they should take it, the risk be damned.

"Tell me more."

"Our Imperial source has told us that Vader will shortly be travelling - travelling _alone_ , I might add - to a remote world called Vrogas Vas…"

"Wait," Leia said, alarmed. "Vrogas Vas is where Luke was heading next!"

"Then we have all the more reason to make sure this information is correct," Mon replied. "I have discussed the matter with Admiral Ackbar and General Dodonna, and with the current state of the fleet we cannot spare a strike force for the amount of time we would need in order to lay a trap in the system. However, we can have that strike force ready to jump to Vrogas Vas at a few hours notice. All we need is one ship to verify this intelligence, and give the signal to our chosen battle group at the most opportune moment. I believe it only right that this ship should be the _Millenium Falcon_."

"I agree," Leia said. If this was true… then they would _have_ Vader. There would be no escape. He would finally face justice for all his crimes… including his crimes against Alderaan. And as the last remnant of Alderaan's royal house, she would be _more_ than happy to be his judge, jury and - Force willing - his executioner.

 **2 BBY - Boz Pity, Halla Sector, Mid Rim**

After months spent tracking the _Ghost_ , Ezra had finally caught up with them on the world of Boz Pity, once the site of a major battle of the Clone Wars and with the mouldering ruins of a Separatist Base left on the surface to draw the Rebellion's interest. Even with Fulcrum long gone - perhaps dead, perhaps not - and Kanan's cowardice preventing him from committing to any kind of cause, the crew of the _Ghost_ remained on the peripheries of the movement, coming and going as the name of the ship implied, doing odd jobs and making a nuisance of themselves. Just not enough of a nuisance for the ISB to commit any serious resources to hunting them down. Not when there was a soon-to-be-Inquisitor to do it for them.

In his quarters on the Bayonet-class cruiser _Starfall,_ Ezra gradually came out of his meditation. Perhaps because Kanan simply did not know how to sever it, their training bond had remained intact, and it was this that had allowed Ezra to track him down. It wasn't exactly reliable or accurate, and often he had arrived at a planet days too late, but this time he was sure. Kanan was here, and when Ezra killed him, he would finally be worthy to be an Inquisitor.

The thought was… uncomfortable, but he pushed the feeling down. He knew why it had to be done. If even the smallest trace of the Jedi philosophy survived… Not that it was necessarily a sure thing that Kanan would have to die. There was always a choice. He could come with Ezra back to Mustafar and that would be enough. Except that Ezra knew Kanan. He knew he would never agree. He hadn't the last time, although the Phantom had come before there had really been time to try to convince him. For all that he refused to stand up for anything _real_ , when it came down to it, Kanan could really be stubborn when he wanted to be.

That left Ezra only one option. An option that he was sure he was capable of. The Inquisitorius had trained him well.

In the internecine bureaucracy of the Empire, the Inquisitorius was technically a branch of the Imperial Security Bureau, and drew transport and support craft from their fleets. The _Starfall_ was part of Atravis sector group, based out of Mustafar, and its Captain was not entirely happy at being seconded to this admittedly protracted search by an Inquisitorial Apprentice. But the order had come from further up the chain of command than Ezra himself. Kanan's death was personal, and personal mattered to the Sith.

Rising, Ezra left his quarters and headed for the bridge. _Starfall_ had already begun long-range scanning of Boz Pity, and would have launched probe droids the moment they emerged from hyperspace. Once the _Ghost_ or some sign of its crew was detected, Ezra would take a TIE down to the surface after them while the ship remained in planetary orbit.

Captain Siln was waiting for him. As an Imperial officer, of course he wouldn't do anything as undignified as show emotion, but despite that his irritation was loud in the Force. "Apprentice," he said, "I hope this time you actually have something to show for your efforts."

"Have the probe droids found anything yet?"

"We have picked up traces of drive emissions near the wreckage of the _Intervention_ ," Siln admitted.

"Then I'll leave at once," Ezra said. "Soon this will be over with and we can return to Mustafar."

What remained of the Venator-class Star Destroyer _Intervention_ was quite substantial for all that the superstructure of the ship had broken apart into several pieces upon impact. It was clearly visible from the air, dwarfing even the surrounding graveyard mounds of the long-extinct Gargantelle. Native flora had begun to overtake it, but it was sure to still be a valuable source of salvage of all kinds, which explained why the _Ghost_ was here, rather than at the Separatist base as Ezra had expected. As he brought the TIE down towards a likely landing site, he reached out to the Dark Side, drawing on memories of Mustafar to inspire the anger he needed. Yes, the training bond was showing him that this was where he had to be. Kanan was here, and close.

Many beings had died when the _Intervention_ crashed, and death always made the Dark Side stronger. He could feel it swirling around him, guiding him onwards, snapping at his heels in a way that could perhaps be called playful if only malevolent wasn't the better word. It was dark inside the deserted corridors of the Venator, the power long dead, but Ezra's helmet came equipped with low-light visuals. He made his way silently through the ship. He hoped they didn't know he was coming, but he wasn't going to depend on it. Making assumptions was a good way to get killed, and Mustafar had done wonders for his survival skills.

Then he came upon a portion of the Venator where the emergency lighting system had been activated, and there was a faint buzzing in the walls which meant that someone had restored the back-up power to this section. The Force was tugging at him now, insistent. Kanan was nearby. Ezra could feel his presence, so familiar. His thoughts flew back to all those months on board the _Ghost_. Even Zeb seemed less annoying in his memories. It had been so hard to stop missing them, but he could never go back to that life. He had to move on. That was the only way. Always move forwards.

If he could just separate Kanan from the rest… He didn't want to fight any of the others. At least the Inquisitorius had allowed him to keep the design of his original lightsaber. Lightsabers were weapons designed to kill and maim, and made it almost impossible to subdue an opponent without also removing a limb, whereas the integrated blaster had a stun setting. Much more versatile, and his instructors had agreed. He wasn't the only agent out there who had this design now, although he had learned to use the dual rotating blades as well.

There was a noise from up ahead. Looking around for somewhere to hide, Ezra's gaze fell on a grate overhead. The ductwork. He was bigger than he used to be, but he should still fit. And he felt comfortable in air ducts. All Force-sensitive younglings did - it was something about enclosed spaces that seemed to appeal, irrespective of species or affiliation. With a wave of his hand he tore the grate away and leapt upwards, and just in time. From his hiding-place, he heard two sets of footsteps coming down the corridor, and the soft whirr of droid wheels.

"I've never seen Kanan this bad before," a deep, rough voice said. Even without the Force he would have recognised it. Zeb. And the voice that replied had to be Sabine.

"Yeah, well I feel pretty terrible too," she said. "But neither he or Hera could have known what was going to happen. That the Empire would turn him into… this."

A loud angry burble answered here. Chopper.

Zeb huffed. "I hate it. We might have had our differences sometimes, but I liked the kid. And now he's either going to kill us all, or we're going to have to kill him."

"It should be me or you. Not Kanan. This weighs heavy enough on him as it is, I don't think…"

"Yeah. I don't think he could do it. If we get a chance…"

"Then we take our shot."

Chopper's angry hiss could only be agreement.

And then they had passed out of earshot once again. So they did know he was coming. But they didn't know he was only here for Kanan. That hurt. Did they really think so little of him? The Inquisitorius had shown him so much, made him realise that the harsh methods of the Empire were only reactions to chaos in the galaxy, and that if he wanted to make things better for people everywhere then he could do more good working inside the system than against it. Without Kanan, the others would be much less of a threat, and so the Empire would be able to relax its iron fist in this part of space. Besides, they were still his friends, his _family_ , and that still meant something.

He still needed to find Kanan. Moving cautiously so the old, worn metal didn't creak or groan under him, Ezra moved through the ductwork, following the pull of the Force. It led him to a hatch looking down on a room that must have been the Infirmary. The once shining-white walls had faded with time, and the monitoring screens showed only dust and error messages, but judging from the heap of boxes piled up on a cargo floater in the centre of the room, there had been plenty of supplies left behind after the crash. Although it was amazing they could find anything in amongst the wreckage – it looked like everything that wasn't screwed down had rattled around in here at the moment of impact, cratering walls and leaving piles of tangled metal everywhere.

And there was Kanan. Kanan _and_ Hera, to be precise, searching through the cupboards and the mess for anything useful to add to what they had already taken. They were talking, and if he strained, Ezra could just about make out their words.

"We're almost done," Hera was saying. "Then we can get out of here before our _friend_ shows up."

Kanan put down the box he was holding. Ezra couldn't see his face from where he was, but his former teacher's shoulders were slumped. He looked worn, weary. Thinner than last time he had seen him. "Please don't talk about him that way Hera."

"Have you forgotten how many times he's tried to _kill_ us?" Hera replied angrily, whirling on Kanan, her lekku twitching, although Ezra thought she was giving him a little too much credit. Mostly he tried to chase them; he rarely got close enough to try to kill anyone. "He betrayed us a long time ago. You need to stop thinking of him as the boy you knew, as your Padawan! That person died on Mustafar."

"And whose fault is that?" Kanan said quietly.

"Not _yours_." Hera said. "It's mine if we're going to blame anyone on this crew. I was the one who made the decision to leave on Lothal. _You_ were half-dead at the time. But the only ones _I'm_ going to blame are the Empire."

"If I had been better..."

This had the sound of an old argument, at least by the way Hera spoke. In some way Ezra was glad that Kanan felt guilt over what had happened that day, even though he himself didn't hold anyone responsible for leaving him. A Jedi might have called it the will of the Force, but a Sith knew better. It had been the will of Darth Vader, for a true Sith Lord told the Force how the world should be and it obeyed. Not that Ezra himself was anywhere near that strong yet, and it would take a lot of training before he could even think about even _seeing_ the future, let alone changing it. But some part of him wanted to know that Kanan... missed him. Wanted that evidence that he had cared about him.

He had heard enough. If he let them go on any longer they might decide to leave, and at the moment he was between them and the door. Kicking the metal grate aside he leapt out of the air-duct and landed in a crouch on the floor of the Infirmary, igniting his lightsaber in the same moment. The snap and hiss of the crimson blade was loud in the sudden, shocked silence.

"Apparently you're so weak in the Force you can't even tell when I'm right above your head," he told Kanan conversationally. "You'll find it a bit harder to escape _this_ time."

"Ezra." Kanan's face had drained of all colour. He hadn't even reached for his lightsaber yet. This would be the perfect time to attack, but it... but it wouldn't be _satisfying._ Kanan deserved at least for this to be a fair fight.

"Look, we can go over the whole argument one more time," Ezra said, giving his lightsaber a little twirl in his hand, mostly just to make things less awkward. "All you have to do is come with me. Abandon the Jedi, learn the ways of the Sith, use the Force the way it was _meant_ to be used!" Only a cold furious gaze met his own. Ezra shrugged, shifting his weight. "Or we can skip all that and get to the part where we fight to the death. How about it?"

"That sounds like a good idea to me," Hera growled, and went for her blaster.

Ezra deflected the shots, drawing his concentration away from Kanan to make sure that they went into the wall rather than into Hera. The last time it had just been him and Kanan, before the _Phantom_ came swooping in to the rescue. "I'm only here for _him_ ," he shouted. "Just get out of my way and you, Sabine and Zeb can all leave safely, I _promise_."

"Like we're going to believe _that!_ " Hera replied, taking cover behind what remained of one of the beds, pulling Kanan with her. Had he been this stunned and useless last time? Maybe. They'd been pretty far apart on the gantries, and then the factory had started busily exploding all around them, so it had been hard to tell.

"Kanan, tell her I'm telling the truth!"

"I can't say I know _anything_ about you any more Ezra," Kanan replied, finally finding his voice.

Ezra made a noise of pure frustration. "Then come out and fight! If you think I'm here to kill all of you, then you should be trying to kill me first!"

"Aren't you going to finish persuading him to join you first, _Inquisitor_?" Hera snarled. "That how your kind deals with Force-users. Promising their loved ones will be safe if all they do is betray everything they've ever known and cared about! Liars and traitors, all of you! You only end up hunting down your friends in the end!"

"Well _yes_ ," Ezra said, annoyed. Still, his anger was a source of strength, letting the Dark Side flow through him with ever-greater ease. He needed that strength - it would prevent him from thinking too hard about what he had to do. "But only because Kanan's a Jedi. And he refused and he keeps refusing and I no longer believe that's ever going to change!" He moved to the side, trying to circle around the mess of rubble, tangled cables and metal scrap, to get a good view of their hiding-place. If he tried to simply jump over, that would leave him open to an attack in the moments before he landed.

"Fine." Kanan stepped out from behind the twisted metal, in the process of screwing the pieces of his lightsaber together.

"Get back here," Hera hissed, just loud enough for Ezra to overhear, but Kanan shook his head.

"We can't keep running forever," he said. "This needs to end. It might as well be now."

He sounded defeated already. Ezra suspected this was going to be depressingly easy. Perhaps Kanan even _wanted_ to die. It was a pity it had come to this, but Ezra was able to look at the bigger picture now in a way he never had when he was younger. It might not seem like it at first, but doing this would make the galaxy a safer place in the end. And no-one _else_ would have to die.

Kanan ignited his lightsaber. Ezra gave him little enough time after that to even get his guard up - aggression was, after all, the way of the Dark Side. Their sabers spat as they clashed, as they tested each other's strength. Ezra had learned a lot in the past few years, and Kanan… well, he had only ever been a padawan. There had been no-one for the last Jedi to spar with since Ezra left, and it showed. He was just a little slower, a little less sure, a little… inadequate. Ezra already knew that he was going to win. It was only a matter of time, and when the opening inevitably came, he would take it.

Then all this would finally be over.

 **0 ABY - Temple Ruins, Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

"You killed him," Luke said, trying to process what he had just seen. What he had just _felt_ … because he had been feeling emotions, thoughts, that weren't his own all throughout that. Thoughts that must have belonged to Ezra. The Inquisitor blinked as the last remnants of the image - of the memory - slowly vanished into the air and darkness that surrounded them.

"I don't know why we saw that…" he said very quietly. "That's not… it didn't ask anything of us. It was just…"

"A memory?" Luke said sharply, completing the thought. "I saw who he was, what he meant to you! He was your teacher! And you just… killed him. Just like that. How _could you_?"

"Because it was necessary!" Ezra snapped, fire blazing in his eyes. "For the good of the Empire, for the good of the galaxy! Not because I _wanted_ to!"

"How can you believe that?" Luke asked. How could anyone murder someone they had cared about so much, just for… for _ideas_? For something so… so abstract? In that vision of the past, he had looked through Ezra's eyes, and he had felt the memories within the memory, everything that Kanan Jarrus the person meant - not just someone who had told Ezra about the Force, but someone to look up to, someone he cared for, someone who was almost a second father. And all that… given up. Abandoned. _Why_?

"He was a Jedi! He would have found another padawan, he would have told them the same lies he told me, it would all have happened all over again and the Empire would have… would have been forced to act against everyone his ideas had touched! By killing _him_ I was saving their lives!"

Luke could hear the pleading in Ezra's voice. He could feel the guilt behind it, the pain, the anger that seeped out of all the cracks in his mind and the oily, strange, cold side of the Force that crept in behind it, trying to soothe. "You mean your crew, right?" he asked softly. "The other ones we saw there, in the memory?"

" _Yes_. Because of what I did, they're still out there, somewhere. Hating me, but alive."

"That kind of choice… it's horrible," Luke said. "I don't understand how you can work for the Empire when they're the ones who forced you to make a choice like that."

Ezra shook his head. The cracks in his Force presence were already beginning to disappear, the cold walls coming up. "Terrible choices are just the way of the galaxy," he said. "And strong governments understand that. It's why terrorists like your Rebel Alliance aren't going to win."

"It _shouldn't_ be like that!" Luke replied. "It doesn't _have_ to be like that!"

"Let's go," Ezra said. "There's going to be more before we make it all the way in."

 **0 ABY - YT-1300** _ **Millenium Falcon,**_ **above Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

Han had shown some good sense for once, and brought the rust-bucket he called a ship out of hyperspace at the edge of the Vrogas Vas system, well out of range of any standard Imperial sensor sweep patterns. Their informant had been very certain that Vader had no knowledge of any treachery, and would not be expecting anyone else to be in this system. They ought to be able to approach carefully at sublight speeds and assess the situation. The _Falcon's_ own sensor suite was… ramshackle at best, even Solo himself had admitted, but Leia had arranged for the Rebellion's technicians to improve it to the point that they would be able to see Vader before he saw them. After the installation was complete they had come here hadn't even been time to make a detour to pick up Chewbacca.

"Are you picking anything up yet?" she asked Han, as they slid past a cold, dead ball of a planet, closer towards the fat red sun ahead of them and the temperate world orbiting it.

"Patience, princess," Han replied, leaning back in his chair. "Even this new tech isn't _that_ good - and where did you steal it anyway; fell off the back of a freighter on the way to KDY?"

"Something like that," Leia admitted. Kuat Drive Yards had always been a bastion of Imperial support, which only made sense given how many credits rolled into Kuat's coffers from them every year. But not everyone employed by that vast company had agreed with the building of the Death Star, and some had been very pleased to see it reduced to nothing more than rubble and dust.

"Hope you don't think you're getting it back when I leave," Han said, smirking. "Smuggling cargo past the Imps'll be child's play with those babies looking out for me."

"Still insisting you've got someplace better to be?" Leia asked. At this point she knew it was only bluffing. Something Solo told himself to pretend he still had the independence he held so dear. No. He might not believe the Alliance could win, but he believed in its ideals, he had friends here - Luke chief amongst them - and he was starting to come around to the idea that they really could strike back against the Empire's tyranny, that there really was hope yet for freedom and democracy.

"Listen, I'm not making any money hanging around with losers…" Han started to say, and then trailed off, focusing intently at the readouts in front of him.

"What is it?"

"We're picking up some readings - difficult to be sure at this distance, but it looks like an Imperial cruiser."

"Then he's already here?" Leia asked, her fingers tightening on the back of Han's chair to the point of pain. "That traitor Karbin said he was still on Nar Shaddaa!"

"He also said Vader would be coming alone," Han pointed out. "Call me crazy, but last time I checked, a whole cruiser doesn't mean alone. That info mentioned a _small_ ship."

Leia couldn't quite hold back her growl of frustration. "I knew we couldn't trust him," she said. "That thing has the firepower to survive our battlegroup _just_ long enough for Imperial reinforcements to arrive. It _has_ to be a trap."

Han started to plot in a course change that would bring them back round, firing up the nav computer as he did so. "I'd've thought they'd be smarter than that," he said. "Should'a known we'd have guessed their plan the moment we saw that cruiser."

Leia frowned. He was right. The Empire could often be overconfident, but it was rarely foolish, and Vader was a great deal smarter than this. Why not a shuttle, or even his TIE-Advance? A good pilot could evade their ships long enough to spring a trap… and Vader was a lot more than just a good pilot, so why this? Why overplay his hand with a show of strength?

"Wait a minute," she said. "Can you fly this thing close enough that we can get a read on their ident without being detected."

"Of course," Han said, affecting indignation at the thought that his piloting might be as shabby as his ship. "But unless you've got the Imp database loaded up on those sensors as well I'm not sure what good it'll do us."

Leia only smiled.

"You don't… do you?"

"An old copy," Leia told him. "Just enough to get us a name, and some sort of history if we're lucky. But that might tell us enough to work out what kind of game the Empire's playing here."

Han nudged the _Falcon_ back onto its original heading, and they continued on further into the system. Leia felt the apprehension curdling in her stomach like something sour, but she ignored it. That too was getting easier to do - she had been in what felt like hundreds of situations where there was no guarantee of a good outcome - and although Han hadn't mentioned it yet, she was sure the possibility was weighing on his mind even heavier than on her own. If Vader had come in that ship, if this trap really was his work, then he had been in the same system as Luke for who knew how long… And there was no way that anything good could have come of that.

"We're getting something," Han said suddenly, breaking through the preoccupation of her thoughts. "That's an ISB cruiser. Bayonet class. The _Starfall_. Huh, not exactly up to Imp standard with a name like that. Should be called the _Devastator,_ or the _Wrathful_ , something like that."

"The ISB… that doesn't seem right," Leia said, half to herself. "Vader is involved with them on occasion, but he much prefers to use Navy resources… so why would he be baiting a trap with an ISB ship?"

"Perhaps its Captain did something to piss him off recently?" Han suggested.

"There's something here we're missing," Leia said.

There was the sense, the shape of something, some thought lurking at the edge of her mind, but she didn't get a chance to get a proper grip on it, because at that moment another ship dropped out of hyperspace approaching the planet. It was a sleek silver yacht and it definitely _did not_ belong in this situation.

"Hell, whoever's on that ship is about to have a very bad day," Han said, looking alarmed.

"Scan it," Leia ordered, her heart sinking. "I have a very bad feeling about this."

 **0 BBY - Tatooine, Arkanis Sector, Outer Rim**

Something was burning. Ezra could smell the acrid, chemical scent, and something else underneath, something very particular and distinctive. He knew it as the scent a lightsaber left after carving through flesh. Here, he suspected a different cause. The air was heavy with smoke.

He was still reeling from the last vision, and from Luke's words to him in that brief moment afterwards. He had done his best to forget Boz Pity. Better to relegate it to the past; he had done what was necessary and let that be the end of it. He had secured his place in the Inquisitorius, ended the threat to the Empire, opened up his path to power that would let him _protect_ people… it was useless to think about the price he had paid for all of that.

It had seemed easier, before he'd done it. He hadn't thought… he hadn't considered what it would _really_ be like, to feel Kanan's life dwindle away, to feel him become one with the Force. To feel Hera's heart break. No, he had only thought about the lies of the Jedi, about what Kanan had been complicit in, even though Kanan had practically still been a child when the Jedi Order existed. But Kanan had only ever known what the Jedi had told him, none of it was really his fault, and… if he could have just joined the Inquisitorius…

No, he was going to _forget_ this! He needed his anger; guilt was no weapon, guilt was just a path to uncertainty and no-one could use the Dark Side if they didn't have confidence in themselves, in the rightness of their actions. Kanan had forced his hand. Believe in that. The others - your _family_ \- they're alive because you killed him. Believe in _that_.

Besides, he was right in the middle of another vision, and he needed to concentrate. It was no memory of his own, which meant he must be seeing something of Luke's. Where was Skywalker? Ezra scanned the unfamiliar surroundings, looking for the small figure through the thick, oily black smoke. In trouble? He hoped not, for his own sake.

"Luke," he called out, trying not to shout too loud, in case unfriendly ears were listening. "Luke, where are you?"

He was somewhere dry, dusty and hot. The sky overhead was a clear blue where it was visible, with… two suns? Binary systems with habitable planets were rare, but he didn't know the names of any systems that might match this one. There was some kind of building a little way off, a low dome scorched with the marks of blaster fire, and several other structures that seemed built into the ground. If Luke was here, perhaps he would find him in there.

As Ezra made his way towards the building, he heard the sound of a speeder approaching. It was an old X-34 model in faded red, though well-maintained. As it slowed and came to a halt, a figure in white jumped out and ran towards the dome. It took a moment, but then he realised - it was Luke. The tan had faded and the hair darkened since whenever this memory was taking place, but it was unmistakably him.

"Uncle Owen!" Luke shouted. "Aunt Beru! Uncle Owen!"

Ezra already had a bad feeling about this. He started to jog towards him. Skywalker didn't seem to have noticed his presence yet. His gaze was fixed on a point just by the open door… and the two bodies that lay there. Ezra swore to himself. Of course. Family. Attachment. Loss. That's what these visions were pulling on. Just measuring their reactions, or were the actual tests yet to come?

Luke looked away from the grisly sight. Ezra could feel his anger, but it was unfocused, no-one to target it on, and not yet sensitive enough in the Force to use it to call on the Dark Side. Perhaps then it would be alright. If this was all the memory had to show them…

A noise came from inside the house. Luke heard it; he snapped to attention and drew the lightsaber that had been hanging from his belt. But his form was terrible, and he held it awkwardly, as though it was unfamiliar to his hand. Had he only just been given it? This memory couldn't be long ago - Luke hadn't changed that much. He had said it was his father's - so where was his father in all this? Long dead, or had it been more recently? Luke had claimed Darth Vader had killed him, but Lord Vader had been hunting Jedi and Force-sensitives for years, so that gave Ezra no clues.

A white helmet poked up out of the sunken stairwell leading down inside the house. Ezra tensed as everything seemed to hold still in a perfect moment of tension and surprise… and then with a yell Luke activated his saber and leapt forwards, swinging wildly. The stormtrooper ducked, and the blade left a glowing line in the wall above his head. His blaster came up, and he squeezed off a trio of shots, forcing Luke back as his saber whirled desperately to deflect them. That anger was no longer vague, aimless, it was concentrated down to a single point of rage, and the moment he was pushed hard enough to really draw on the Force…

It couldn't have actually happened this way, Ezra realised. Not and have Luke still be the person that he was now. And that trooper… his presence in the Force was oddly flat, not like that of a real person at all. It was as if he was simply… a puppet. Yes, that was it. The trooper was no more real than his own vision of the Inquisitor in the temple on Lothal. Which meant that this _was_ a test… and one which Luke was going to fail if things continued on as they were now.

That realisation should have pleased him. So why didn't it? Even if Luke started to use the Dark Side and they became trapped, they had Aphra to pull them out. Why was he so worried?

"Luke, _wait_ ," he shouted, operating on instinct. "Think about this! Remember where you really are!"

But Luke didn't seem to hear him. _Couldn't_ hear him, perhaps. Ezra hadn't noticed Luke's presence while he was reliving their last memory, so perhaps he was just as invisible to Luke in this one. So what could he do then? Nothing? Just let this play out? No, he sensed danger ahead if things continued on their current path, vague and nebulous, but still present.

Luke swung again, the lightsaber humming through the air, scoring a line along the stormtrooper's shoulder - but it was only a glancing hit, not deep enough to truly wound. Still, the trooper shouted out in alarm, and started to back away down the stairs, firing his blaster as he went. Ezra felt the Force pulse around Skywalker and Luke flung himself to the side out of the way, cursing.

That gave him an idea. Maybe he wasn't able to reach Luke _physically_ , but through the Force… the Dark Side was all around them, trembling with a sense of eagerness, just waiting on Luke's slightest command to jump to his will. But it would answer to Ezra's just as well. He reached out his mind towards the brilliant fire that was Luke, reached out to that fury that wanted to avenge the loss of his family - a fury Ezra knew all too well.

 _Luke_ , he called. _Luke, stop. Wait. Wait just a moment._

His words were answered by confusion, a flurry of thoughts too fast to read, and then _finally_ Luke turned towards him, lowered his saber.

"Ezra?" he said. "What are you doing here… oh." Ezra felt the realisation slowly spread across his mind as the temple's cloak of disorientation gradually disintegrated. "This… this isn't real."

"No, it's not. It's one of the tests. Trying to see what you'll do when you're angry."

Luke looked down at the lightsaber in his hand as though he was surprised by its very presence. "It didn't happen like this," he said. "When I got here… there wasn't anyone left."

Slowly, their surroundings began to dissolve, the light of the two suns overhead fading back into the familiar darkness of the temple.

"Where was that anyway?" Ezra asked. The light from Luke's blade illuminated the walls all around them, illuminated their faces and not much more. Luke's expression was pained. The anger had mostly ebbed away from him, but the sorrow remained.

"My home," he replied.

"What happened?"

"Why are you asking?" Luke glared at him. "You don't really want to know - you're part of the Empire, you agree with everything they do, even when they murder people! You're nothing more than one of their executioners! They killed my family; my father, my mother - I never knew much about her but my Aunt and Uncle told me that much. Owen and Beru were all I had, and then the Empire killed them too!"

Ezra found himself taking a step back in the face of the venom turned his way. The Dark Side was still close, and if Luke reached out to it now… he wasn't sure he'd survive the experience. Perhaps this was what his instincts had been trying to tell him. Let the padawan turn away from the Light Side and the Jedi, but let him do it once Ezra was well away from here! He would be far too dangerous until he learned to _use_ his anger, to _control_ it.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You're right; I shouldn't have asked."

"Fine," Luke said, turning away and powering off his lightsaber. "Then let's keep going."

Luke really didn't like how he was feeling at the moment. He wasn't used to being this angry, this… this out of control. Ever since he had left Tatooine he had been angry at the Empire, but it hadn't been anger like that, anger that burned, that chased all of the thought out of your head. The only time he had felt like that before was facing Darth Vader on the factory moon, and look how much good that had done him! Vader had smacked him down with ease, and would have killed him if it weren't for Leia and Han. He had vowed that next time would be different, next time he would be stronger in the Force, a better fighter, and he would be _smart_ about it.

But it was one thing to say that to yourself, another to actually do it. Was that what the vision had been trying to show him? It had been so raw, so real. Just like being back there, after pushing the speeder to its limits to reach their house from the destroyed Jawa transport, already knowing in the back of his mind that it was too late from the very moment he saw the stain of smoke on the horizon. The stormtroopers hadn't even given them the decency of a burial. Just left their bodies there, left their bones to dry in the sun. Probably hoping it too would be blamed on Sand People.

How was he, how was _anyone_ , supposed to be calm in the face of that?

He followed Ezra sullenly on down the corridor. Had he been too harsh, speaking to him like that? None of it was untrue, and after what he had seen in the Inquisitor's memories… if he had been about to fail the temple's test because he cared too much, then at least that was better than caring so little you could do that… or twisting your caring into whatever strange, warped version of it now drove Ezra on. No, he didn't regret his words, and even Ezra hadn't objected to it. Luke had felt that much from him - a weary kind of acceptance.

So what now? How many more tests, visions, could there be?

Next time, Luke vowed, next time, he would do better.

 **0 ABY - J-type 327 Nubian yacht** _ **Padmé Amidala**_ **, above Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

The boy - his _son_ \- was alive. That much became clear at the moment of Vader's arrival in this system. The world of Vrogas Vas glowed in the Force, but Luke's presence burned more brightly still. How was it that he had not seen it at their last meeting? He had seen that strength, acknowledged it, but he had not considered what it might _mean_. He had not looked deeply enough to see the truth that, now he knew it, was so obvious. There had been no reason to suspect the boy was his son, no reason to suspect that he even _had_ a son, but that was a poor excuse. The Force would have told him, had he merely asked it.

There was no time to dwell on mistakes. Luke was alive, yes, but that was no guarantee that he was _safe_. Until he had the Inquisitor in front of him and could pull the answers he needed from his mind he would not know the reasons he had come to be here. The man might yet turn out to be a traitor. And now that he was here above Vrogas Vas, he could sense what had drawn his son; there was a Jedi Temple on the planet. Such a place was not without its own dangers for the unwary and untrained. Luke was strong, but he knew little of the ways of the Force. Kenobi had been too scared of his potential to teach him - it was the only explanation Vader could see for the current state of affairs. But that too had its own benefits - there would be no bad habits for him to unlearn.

He was being hailed. Vader roused himself from the state of meditation that he usually maintained during hyperspace travel and opened the channel.

"Unidentified vessel, this is the ISB cruiser _Starfall_. You are trespassing on an Imperial mission. State your name and purpose in this star system immediately, or you will be met with deadly force."

So, the Inquisitor had not informed his ship of the situation on the planet's surface. That had been wise of him; the fewer people who knew anything about Luke the better. It would only have taken the mention of Luke's name… he could not take the chance that someone old enough to have a good memory of the Clone Wars would put the pieces together. Vader accessed his own ship's systems, searching the database for this particular vessel.

"Captain Siln," he said, and heard the intake of breath over the channel as the captain recognised who was speaking. His voice _was_ particularly distinctive. "My business here is none of your concern."

"Lord Vader!" the captain said. "I apologise! Of course, we await your orders. The Twelfth Brother remains on the surface at the present moment, but we can hail him immediately…"

"That will not be necessary Captain," Vader said. "I will be landing on Vrogas Vas. Remain in orbit. I may have further orders for you."

"Yes, my lord."

Vader closed the channel. Captain Siln was obedient, and to his credit, not inclined to ask questions despite the inquisitiveness that would have been drilled into him as part of ISB training. Whether he would live to continue to serve the Empire was a question regarding which he had not yet decided. Much would depend on what he found on the planet below, and the answers the Twelfth Brother gave him.

That designation… he remembered the boy, remembered him as something other than the usual apprentices whose final training he usually oversaw. He had captured the boy personally. The Inquisitor had once been a Jedi's padawan, one of their poor attempts at continuing the traditions of their fallen order, and his strength in the Force had been slightly above average. And he had killed his former Master, which showed promise for a Sith.

Was this significant? Perhaps not.

Soon it would not matter. Soon he would have his son.

 **0 ABY - YT-1300** _ **Millenium Falcon**_ **, above Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

"Karbin was telling the truth after all," Han said, as their tenuous hold on the Imperial comm channel finally slipped and disintegrated into static. "Huh. Wouldn't have thought it of some Imp officer slime."

Leia made no reply. She could barely seem to think through the white noise that filled her skull. He was here. Vader was here. That _torturer_ , that _murderer_ … He was here, in a sleek little ship that couldn't hold much more than just the monster himself, and he was heading for the planet's surface - alone. The presence of the cruiser made things more complicated, but their course of action seemed clear. Vader had to be captured, or he had to die. She knew which she would personally prefer, but it would be better for the Rebellion if they could take him alive. That kind of propaganda victory, piled on top of the one they had already won in destroying the Death Star…

But if they did somehow manage to capture him, could they keep him? Vader was an army in and of himself, as the Empire's own propaganda machine was always only too quick to capitalise on. When Vader was put in charge of an Imperial campaign, he led from the front, and they had the footage to prove it - carefully curated by COMPNOR, of course. Killing him would be challenge enough.

"What's _Vader_ doing with a pretty ship like that?" Han was saying, although it must have been obvious that Leia was only half listening. "It looks like something _you_ should be flying around in, Princess."

"It doesn't matter," she said, shaking herself out of her thoughts. It was foolish to get caught up in all the things that could go wrong. She knew what had to be done. They had been handed an opportunity, and even if things weren't quite as favourable as they had hoped given the cruiser currently in orbit, the potential rewards far outweighed the many risks. The battle group was waiting, and would be more than a match for a single Imperial vessel. "We've got to make the call, and summon the fleet that Mon promised."

"And what about Luke?" Han asked, gesturing to the blue and green ball of the planet below. "You heard - Vader's heading down there right now! By the time your ships get here, it might be too late!"

Leia raised an eyebrow. "Are you of all people suggesting we should embark on a risky, potentially suicidal rescue mission?" she asked him sarcastically. "Oh wait, I remember how well thought out your plan to rescue _me_ was."

"Hey, that plan was all Luke's idea," Han replied. "My plans are much better."

"Let's hear it then."

He hesitated. "Well I hadn't actually gotten that far yet. But we can't just hang around here waiting for a couple of hours after we send the signal! Who the hell knows why Vader came here, but the moment he finds out that Luke is down there too, it's all over for the kid!"

They _should_ wait. It would be the smarter thing to do. But Leia couldn't deny that she was worried about Luke as well. Heading down to the surface would alert the Imperials to their presence… but that yacht couldn't be as fast or as well-armed as the _Falcon_ , and if they could make it past the cruiser into atmosphere, then they might be able to prevent Vader from making any kind of escape. If they could destroy or disable his ship… that would greatly improve the Rebellion's chances.

"Do you really think you can make it?" she asked.

"Piece of cake," Han said, smirking. "Send your signal, and then I'll show you some real fancy flying."

Ezra blinked. He was standing on a stage, staring out at a crowd of grim and silent faces. A TIE fighter screamed overhead, swooping low over familiar buildings. He was on Lothal, in Central City. In the plaza where the Empire Day celebrations were always held. And where… he turned around.

He had been expecting to see a younger version of himself behind him, but the reality was far worse. Sabine, Hera and Zeb were on their knees in front of a line of stormtroopers, arms cuffed behind their backs, heads bowed. The troopers held their blasters at the ready, only waiting for the signal. The firing squad. Ezra remembered them from his own execution.

No. No this couldn't be happening! This wasn't real! If something like this had happened, he would have heard about it, he would have _known_ , he would have been able to… been able to…

 _Rescue them_? he asked himself. _Is that what you would have done?_ He didn't know. He didn't… this hadn't been part of the agreement. Kanan was dead, that meant the others would be _safe_ , it meant…

"Inquisitor," someone said beside him. He turned again, and looked into the expectant, smirking face of Agent Kallus. Kallus raised his eyebrows, and gestured to the trio. "Such trouble these terrorists have caused," Kallus said, looking at Hera and shaking his head in a mockery of sadness. "But with their deaths, you will be striking a blow for peace across the sector. Dissidents like them will think twice before daring to strike against the Empire and the safety of its citizens."

Ezra was holding a lightsaber. Not his own; one of the standard Inquisitorial models, impersonal, not attuned to him, but serviceable enough. Ezra looked down at it, then at Kallus. He had always hated Kallus, whose personal philosophy seemed to be the same as that of Tarkin - rule through fear, claiming that this was strength. He had gloated, _gloated_ , about the genocide of Zeb's people, about the burning of Lasan. He would be pleased now wouldn't he, to be able to finish the job.

"Will you do the honours?"Kallus asked him "After all, it is you we have to thank for their capture, is it not?"

No. No, that couldn't be true, even in this false version of reality that would _never_ be true, he would _never…_

 _You killed Kanan,_ a voice said in his head, a voice sounding very much like Luke. _You really think you aren't capable of this?_

"No," Ezra said quietly.

"I beg your pardon Inquisitor?" Kallus said.

 _Don't kill him either!_ Luke's voice said quickly. _Remember what you warned me, about using the Dark Side here. It's just an illusion. It's just the Temple._

Ezra relaxed his hold on the Dark Side - he had barely been aware that he was drawing it to him. He had been moments from driving his lightsaber through Agent Kallus' chest, from going on to slaughter every stormtrooper here just to keep his friends safe. His crew were his family, even now.

 _Yes, I would have gone to rescue them, if it had come to this_ , he admitted to himself. _I would have abandoned the Inquisitorius, I would have abandoned strength, the road to changing the galaxy, to removing people like Tarkin and Kallus from power… I would have given it all up for them_.

And if these trials were useful for nothing else, they were useful in teaching him that much about himself.

Vader strode through the temple corridors, his lightsaber held ready at his side. He could feel his son's presence burning ahead of him, past a barrier in the Force that was _meant_ to turn away those not sufficiently trained for the trials that lay beyond it. That did not seem to have stopped Luke. Or perhaps he had the Twelfth Brother to thank for this? Aphra's ship had been outside along with his son's X-wing, but there had been no sign of the Inquisitor or his TIE. The TIE was likely elsewhere in the forest, but he could not feel the Inquisitor in the Force. Since he surely was not dead, the only possibility remaining was that he was close enough to Luke for the boy's own Force presence to mask him.

Why had the Twelfth Brother done this? Why had he helped Luke find the way into the Temple? - for although his son's natural abilities were great, Vader strongly doubted they were enough to breach that barrier without _some_ form of guidance. It was not in his self-interest, and Vader _knew_ Aphra had made it very clear to the Inquisitor just whom she was working for.

 _She_ should have stopped this. That she had not was… _displeasing_. Even if she knew nothing of the Force, she knew not to trust an unknown factor like the Inquisitor.

He had reached the barrier. When he passed it, no doubt the temple would attempt to test him, but he had no interest in the pitiful trials of the Jedi. They were immaterial to him; he was the Chosen One, his strength was unmatched by any in the galaxy save his Master. There was nothing they could show him that he had not already seen. There was an irony in that - it was only once he had left the path of the Jedi forever that he had lost all of the attachments that they would have had him cast aside; Kenobi, Padmé, their child…

Except that he had not lost his son. The thought gave him a moment's pause, but he knew himself to be stronger than any mere vision. If they attempted to trick him, to distract him from reaching Luke, then he would tear them apart with the power of the Dark Side.

Vader stepped through the barrier, the Light Side retreating before him. Yet it did not stay away for long. It had simply paused to gather itself, too set in its habit of centuries to do anything but what the Jedi had commanded of it. The passage in front of him faded away, and he found himself… elsewhere.

This was Tatooine - even had he not recognised the building in which he stood that much would have been obvious. It was in the taste of the dust-dry air, the golden sand that collected in every corner no matter how often the floors were swept, the particular quality of the light of the binary suns. Etra and Tyun, Justice and Vengeance in the slave tongue, the eggs of the Krayt dragon awaiting the moment of the great chain-breaking to hatch and unleash their wrath on all Masters. A foolish folktale. As a child he had dreamed of freeing slaves, of returning to Tatooine as a Jedi Master, of seeing the Hutts dead at his feet… but the Jedi had not cared what happened outside the boundaries of their weak Republic. The Senate was too corrupt. He had been forced to accept the truth of the matter - the existence of slavery was too profitable for any of these so-called civilized worlds to object to. Their mouths condemned it, whilst their pockets filled with credits.

The Republic might have fallen, but the people had not changed.

This vision was showing him the palace of Gardulla the Hutt. She was holding court here, surrounded by the smugglers, the slavers, the bounty-hunters, everyone who fawned in front of her throne hoping for the credits her favour could bring their way. In the shadows her house-slaves moved around almost unnoticed, ensuring a constant flow of food, water and spirits and cleaning up the inevitable mess left behind. Was his mother somewhere amongst these faces? Was he, as some version of his younger self?

Did the temple hope to provoke his anger by reminding him of this time? These memories were irrelevant. They belonged to the childhood of a man who was long dead and replaced by someone stronger. They had no power over him.

" _I grow bored,_ " Gardulla announced to the crowd in Huttese. " _Bring me some entertainment."_

Two guards dragged a struggling man forwards and forced him to his knees in front of the Hutt's dais. He was certainly a slave, nearly naked, his back scarred with whip marks and with one leg that had been broken in the past and healed badly twisted. No doubt that was why he had been chosen - thus hampered, he was of limited use. Gardulla's idea of _entertainment_ was one that habitually ended in death, and this man would not be a great loss to her.

"Bets!" Gardulla cried, lifting a little black rod in one hand. Such a deceptively simple device. One would not think, to look upon it, what threat it held. But he remembered it and could not stop his jaw from tensing with the sudden stab of anger. Shouting and laughter erupted from the crowd, hands waving credit chips in the air. The slave trembled. His face was not familiar. Yet Vader did not doubt this was a true memory, even if it struck no immediate chord within him.

What did it matter? He had to find his son; he should not allow himself to be distracted by the meaningless things the temple chose to show him. He reached out for the Force, intending to shred this illusion and continue on.

"Betting is closed!" Gardulla said as the shouting reached its fever-pitch, and pressed a button on the control rod. There was a dull thump, muffled by flesh and bone, and a wet slap as blood and meat hit the flagstones. A hole a handspan across had been torn from the slave's left shoulder, detaching his arm with it. A ruin of ribs, muscles and pumping arterial blood was all that was left in the wake of the chip's detonation. The Hutt laughed, belly-deep, joined by other voices mingled with curses from those who had guessed the location wrongly.

Vader turned away. He had seen enough.

Behind him a voice cried out.

"Father!"

He couldn't stop himself from looking. Even though he knew it could not be real, that it would only be another lie. Luke lay on the sandstone floor in a spreading pool of blood, tears of pain running down his face. The arm that was left to him was reaching out, reaching towards him.

With a shudder, the flagstones under Vader's feet cracked and cratered. Pillars trembled. Gardulla's court, those _scum_ , started to back away, then collapsed clawing at their throats. The Hutt herself, vast body quivering, started to rise into the air, eyes rolling, fat tongue lolling out…

The vision vanished. The last scraps of it disappeared in shreds of light and colour, torn apart in the hurricane of his wrath. He was left with nothing but dark stone and the harsh rasp of his respirator echoing from the walls.

No. His son was alive, unharmed. Free. Grakkus had not had time to implant a chip. He was _so close_.

Soon Luke would be his, and he would be _safe_.

 **19 BBY - Mustafar, Atravis Sector, Outer Rim**

Luke had no time to think about what he had just seen in Ezra's vision, whether it had any basis in reality or not, because instead of fading back into the corridor in the temple, they had already been pushed into another of the visions. If the pattern held true, then this ought to be something connected to him, but nothing around about looked familiar. And he could see Ezra, feel his surprise and confusion, which he shouldn't have been able to if this was one of his own tests. They were standing on a landing platform next to a beautiful silver yacht - Luke thought it might be a Nubian design - looking out over a landscape made of rock and fire. The sky overhead was dark with thick black clouds, lit from below by the flows of lava that seemed to ooze from every crevice in the broken hills and mountains that surrounded them. The yacht's landing ramp was open, but there didn't seem to be any sign of life.

"This… this is Mustafar," Ezra said beside him, eyes wide. "Why are we here? And… that's not the Inquisitorius facility _I_ know."

"Mustafar… you mentioned that name before," Luke said. "That's where the Inquisitors are trained, right?"

Ezra nodded. "I thought we'd be in another of your memories. It's not mine - none of the buildings look the same."

"But the Force - the temple - it's showing us this for a reason. Perhaps it's a warning…" Luke didn't get a chance to complete his thought. At that moment, there was a shudder in the Force, like some sort of intangible explosion. Even the vision itself moved with it, becoming fuzzy and indistinct for a brief moment before reforming. As it did so, a figure came down the ramp of the ship behind them. Luke turned to look, thinking perhaps he or Ezra might know them, that that would be the connection, but something was wrong. He couldn't see her face. It was almost as though the vision was acting like a corrupted holotape, showing bits and pieces but unable to put the whole thing together. He looked at Ezra, but the Inquisitor seemed just as confused as he was.

Another figure came running towards them from the buildings, if anything even more indistinct. All that seemed to be there was a dark shadow, a smudge on the air. The two embraced and then began speaking in low voices. Luke approached them warily, but he might as well have been invisible for all the notice they took of him.

"This doesn't seem… right," he said.

"It's not," Ezra replied. "This isn't a memory and it doesn't seem like a test… so what is it? Why show it to us?"

The two figures no longer seemed to be just talking, but arguing. Their body language had become stiff and angry. The taller one, the dark shadow, raised an arm… Once again, a shudder passed through the Force, through the vision. It shook the two figures apart into nothingness and left merely the landing platform and the ship, as empty and lifeless as they had been before. Luke shivered. This was starting to be more than a little bit creepy.

"Does the temple want something from us?" he asked. "Are we meant to be doing something?"

"I have no idea," Ezra replied, sounding just as frustrated as Luke felt.

Luke was growing more and more uneasy. What if there was something wrong with the trials, with the temple? What if after all these years without being used, without any Jedi here to look after it, it had malfunctioned somehow, gotten stuck in some kind of loop - as even the best AI programming he knew sometimes did - and they were going to be stuck here? Not that he really believed the Force worked like that, but now that the thought had occurred to him it was proving difficult to shift.

Then there was movement again. A man in a dirty white tunic and trousers came jogging up a set of stairs Luke hadn't previously noticed, heading towards the ship. Whatever strange effect that had been earlier, it didn't seem to be affecting _him_. No, Luke could make out his features as he came closer and he seemed… very familiar. But familiar how? His gaze dropped to the lightsaber strapped to the man's belt, and then his mind made the connection.

"Ben?"

But Ben was no more able to hear him than the figures earlier. He looked… he looked weary beyond belief. And he was younger; a lot younger. His hair was still ginger, and his face had none of the lines that age and Tatooine's weather would one day give it. He headed towards the ship and disappeared inside.

"Kenobi…" Ezra too was staring at Ben, with a dawning familiarity.

"How do you know Ben Kenobi?" Luke asked him suspiciously.

"Ben? That's Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi," Ezra replied, frowning at him. "I saw him on a Jedi holocron once. I assumed he'd died a long time ago, but if _you_ know him…"

The reminder and the pain that came with it hit Luke like a slap in the face. He didn't _want_ to tell Ezra anything about Ben - it would feel wrong, telling this Imperial, this _Sith_ , about any of it. As though he were dirtying Ben's memory somehow. But what if he had to, what if it was important somehow to why they were seeing this? He swallowed past the sudden dry lump in his throat.

"He lived… near me, on Tatooine, while I was growing up. After my Aunt and Uncle were killed, we left, and he taught me for a little while. Darth Vader… murdered him, on the Death Star."

"There were rumours about that," Ezra said, looking thoughtful. "So it was Master Kenobi… I heard stories about him from when he was a General during the Clone Wars. Kenobi and…" He stopped speaking suddenly.

"What?" Luke asked suspiciously.

"The ramp is closing," Ezra pointed out, although that was certainly _not_ what he had been going to say. "I have a feeling we should be on that ship."

"Fine," Luke said, following him as he started to run. It wasn't far; in a moment they were on the yacht, and the ramp hissed closed behind them.

"Now what were you really going to say?" Luke asked, before Ezra could wander away into the ship and find something happening to distract him from the question.

"I can't tell you," Ezra said.

"You mean you don't _want_ to tell me."

"I mean if I do tell you something terrible will happen to me."

Luke stared at him. He was not entirely certain how much he should trust his impressions of the Force given how strange this vision had been so far, but from what he could tell, Ezra seemed to be sincere. Which made nothing any clearer.

"Don't ask me any more," Ezra said. "For both our sakes. Now, come on. I want to see what Kenobi is doing on this ship."

For the moment at least, Luke was willing to do that, if only because of how serious Ezra seemed to be about this. But that certainly didn't mean that the subject was closed - he _would_ be asking about it again once they got out of here.

The yacht wasn't big - at the moment they were standing in a small ante-chamber that would also undoubtedly function as an airlock in vacuum conditions. Ezra touched a few controls on the panel beside the inner door, and it slid aside with a gentle hiss to reveal a larger room that stretched the length of the vessel with a stair in the center leading up to the cockpit. Kenobi was standing at the edge of a bed to one side of the room. Someone was lying there, asleep or unconscious. The woman from earlier! Luke recognised her from her clothes at least. Although… this time it didn't look as though her face was being concealed by that strange effect. Two droids also stood nearby - and they were familiar too!

"Isn't that the droid that shot me in the back?" Ezra asked, pointing to the little white-and-blue astromech.

"Yes, that's Artoo," Luke replied, amazed. He had never been entirely clear if Artoo's claim of once belonging to Ben had been true, or just a convenient fabrication to allow him to pass on Leia's message. But it seemed that the little droid really had been telling the truth. And the other one… that was C3P0! Had they _both_ belonged to Kenobi before they had - presumably - been given to the Rebel Alliance?

"So he was Kenobi's before he was yours? I suppose that explains why he's so vicious," Ezra muttered under his breath.

"That's unfair," Luke told him, glaring. Artoo wasn't vicious! He was just… protective. And more than capable of doing something about his protectiveness. He was about to say something more, but then the woman stirred slightly, and Ben reached out to touch her shoulder as she began to wake. Luke moved nearer, hoping that this time they would be able to hear something that might explain what was going on here. The woman was pregnant, he realised. Earlier he hadn't been able to tell, but was that because of the Force effect or were the two parts of the vision actually separated in time?

"Obi-Wan…" the woman said, turning her head to look up at Ben. "Is Anakin alright?"

Luke felt as if all the breath had been knocked out of him. Anakin… his father… it could have been a coincidence, there had to be thousands of people with that name in the galaxy, but in these circumstances a coincidence was beyond unlikely. Here was the connection they'd been looking for - not only Ben Kenobi, but something to do with his father as well! Which must mean… this was his mother!

Luke stared at her. He felt like he was trying to drink in every little detail about her, the smallest thing about her appearance, her face, her eyes… did they look alike? It wouldn't have crossed his mind before, not without this realisation to make him look, but… maybe there was something. Or maybe it was just that he _wanted_ them to look alike. And if she was pregnant then… she must be pregnant with him!

Ben put a comforting hand against his mother's face, but he said nothing. Luke couldn't see his face from where he stood, but… he remembered all too well the expression that had been on it earlier. He knew what this had to mean. He knew what this memory, this vision, had to be about.

This was the aftermath of his father's death.

That's where Ben had been, that's what he'd seen to make him look so defeated. He had just watched Darth Vader - his former pupil - murder Anakin Skywalker.

As Ben moved away, climbing the stairs to the cockpit, the vision wavered around them. Then gradually it disappeared, and they were back in the darkness of the Temple. Luke looked over at Ezra, who had a thoughtful expression on his face - what little could be seen of it in the very dim light.

Luke didn't really feel like talking to him, didn't feel like discussing what they had just seen. He didn't want to analyse why the temple had shown him that. And what had that first part been about? He was sure now that the first figure, the woman, had been his mother. But the other? Could _that_ have been his father? If so, what had they been arguing about? Perhaps about Vader. His father must have wanted to go and fight him… He wasn't exactly happy to have seen the vision, but the opportunity to see his mother's face, to hear her voice, for the first time in his life… that felt like a gift. If only it could have been from a happier time! A time when perhaps his father might have been there too, and Luke could have seen to two of them, together…

He sighed. No, the temple wouldn't have shown them something like that. It wasn't going to show them happy things, not when there was no lesson to be learned from them. What had the lesson been from that… perhaps only to warn him about the consequences of the Dark Side. Of turning against the Jedi way, as Vader had done.

Well the Temple and the Force had nothing to worry about. He would never let himself become _anything_ like Vader.

Obi-Wan was here. Padmé had betrayed him. Rage boiled inside him, bringing the power of the Force with it. Palpatine had been right - he had never felt as strong as he did in these moments since he had allowed his feelings free reign. His anger and pain didn't make him weaker, as the Jedi had told him. They had lied, they had lied for _years_ , and they would have taken Padmé away from him! Even Obi-Wan had lied, and now he was here, now he had turned Padmé, the only person who really _mattered_ away from him! What had he said to her, to make her think this way?

His fist was clenched in the air, wrapping the Force around it. He could feel his fingers digging into flesh, digging _through_ flesh, closing up her throat. No more. No more words, no more of Kenobi's lies coming out of her mouth. Every sentence had been a knife stabbing into him and he couldn't…

 _No!_ His own voice, inside his head. _Stop! This wasn't what you wanted!_

His grip loosened. Padmé collapsed to the ground, unmoving.

 _She's dead_ , a part of himself whispered. _You've killed her._ You _killed her._

 _No. No, I didn't. I_ couldn't have _._

Because Luke existed. Luke was alive, and that meant that Padmé could not have died in this moment. However her death had truly come about, it had not been by his own hand. This was the temple, showing him no more than another Jedi lie, like all the other lies that had come before it.

 _Enough of this_ , he thought, and turned his anger against the vision itself once more, tearing it asunder. It was irrelevant. He needed to find his son, and then they could leave this place.

' _The kid is Luke Skywalker'_. That's what Aphra had told him. Things were starting to come together in Ezra's mind. Seeing Kenobi had allowed him to remember where he'd heard the name Skywalker before; it was from those rare occasions he'd been able to get Kanan to talk about the time before the Empire, during the Clone Wars. Kenobi and Skywalker. The Negotiator and the Hero With No Fear. Two Jedi who had been the heroes and idols of the Republic, Generals without peer. Where they went, armies were shattered, navies destroyed, and Separatists fell. They had seemed unstoppable. At least, that's what Kanan had told him. It might have all been Jedi propaganda, Republic propaganda. But either way it would have to have some basis in fact. Those two had been Jedi of a different order, far more powerful than Kanan, than even Fulcrum. The sort of Jedi only a Lord of the Sith could have a hope of defeating.

No wonder Luke was so strong, if he was Skywalker's son. No wonder it had taken Lord Vader personally to see to his father's death. And no wonder he had this connection with Kenobi, although it was strange how little he had been taught by him. Ezra would have thought this padawan - no doubt intended to be the instrument of the Jedi's revenge - would have been trained from birth in the ways of the Jedi, brought up completely brainwashed by their philosophy. But that hadn't happened. Why?

And why had Skywalker had a child in the first place? Surely a Jedi as dedicated and powerful as that would have been equally devoted to their ideals, including the ones about attachment?

It didn't really matter, Ezra decided. What mattered was that he was here, now, little more than a padawan, and walking straight into Lord Vader's trap. After they finished up here in the Temple, all Ezra needed to do was make sure he continued on that path, that Aphra was free to follow him back to the Rebels and free to contact Lord Vader with that information. Then that would be the end of it, and the end of the Jedi's secret weapon as well.

He'd almost slipped up in there, almost revealed that he knew Luke's last name even though Luke had never mentioned it. That would have been disastrous. But at the moment it looked like Luke had too much else on his mind to pursue that particular question. Good. Ezra hoped the temple and its secrets would continue to keep him sufficiently distracted. They couldn't be too far from the center now. The way ahead felt clear, no fogging in the Force, no hint of any other traps.

And indeed, after a short while following Luke on down the passage, the walls suddenly opened up all around them. Thin beams of light slanting down from slits in a ceiling that was far above them illuminated a large chamber. Slender, elegant pillars rose up in two rows ahead, with statues interspersed between them. Various heavy blast doors were set into the walls to either side, sealed shut. Ezra could feel the wonder that bloomed through Luke's mind.

"Wow," Skywalker said softly. "This is…"

"Everything you imagined?" Ezra asked him.

"I don't know what I imagined," Luke replied. Whatever dark thoughts had been weighing on him had entirely vanished, at least for the moment. "It feels so peaceful."

That was one way of putting it. The Light Side of the Force was strong here, and its placid stillness could be called peaceful, although it was no kind of peace that Ezra wanted. To him this place felt silent, watchful… unbearable. He hoped they would be able to find whatever Luke wanted here quickly and then get out as soon as possible.

"What do you think is behind all these doors?" Luke asked, approaching one of them. His hand reached forwards to touch it, fingers brushing the cold metal.

"Jedi artefacts, I assume," Ezra replied. "Relics of previous Knights and Masters. Their knowledge. This place is clearly untouched."

Luke whirled to face him, eyes narrowed. "Don't go getting any ideas," he said. "I'm not letting you destroy _anything_ in here!"

"I wasn't thinking about it," Ezra admitted, although he really should have been. It was his duty, after all.

"Ah," said a voice behind him. "Here you are. And all in one piece too." It was Aphra, looking relieved to see them both. The astromech droid - Artoo - was by her side, beeping inquisitively. Ezra found himself almost glad to see her as well, if only because her presence would mean getting out of here all the sooner.

"Aphra!" Luke grinned. "You didn't run into any problems did you?"

"Nope," she said. "And you seem to have survived these trials of yours too."

"Just about," Luke replied, various conflicting emotions passing across his face - and through his mind. "Anyway, I was hoping you might be able to give us a hand with these doors? I think that might be more your speciality. And Artoo might be able to help as well."

"I can't deny it, I'm good at breaking into places" Aphra said, shrugging. She dropped her pack by the entrance and came over to have a look at the heavy durasteel door and its control interface. "This is pretty old tech. Luckily old tech is my speciality." She popped the control panel out of the wall with a tool from her belt, and after a surprisingly short span of time spent tinkering with the wiring underneath, the doors slid open with a grinding whirr that spoke of decades without being used.

At first darkness hid whatever was inside, but it took only the touch of another wire for Aphra to bring up the lights, revealing a row of smaller statues on either side of the door, each with their hands held cupped in front of them. Ezra could feel how the Light Side gathered here with even greater strength, drawn by whatever these statues held. Luke walked forwards into the room with the exaggerated slowness of a sleepwalker, his eyes wide and wonder pouring from him. His menace of an astromech droid followed him, bleeping curiously.

"These must have been old Jedi Masters," Skywalker said, mostly to himself.

"Listen, you," Aphra hissed, too quietly for Luke to hear, rising from her crouch and grabbing Ezra's arm. "What game do you think you're playing, bringing the kid in here? When Vader finds out that you did this…"

"No harm came to him," Ezra replied quickly, and just as quietly. "You told me to answer his questions, and that's what I'm doing." He was antagonising her and he knew it, it was just that the words seemed to come out of his mouth without his brain getting in the way. As her glare bored into him, he realised he was full of a kind of elated fear - knowing he had done something very foolish and would probably die because of it, but in the meantime he had done just what he _himself_ wanted, which was a rare thing in his life.

"Even if you delivered this kriffing Jedi rubbish to Lord Vader personally that wouldn't be enough to save you," Aphra said.

"It doesn't matter," Ezra said. "It's done now. And if you want to keep up your own cover, you'd better start showing an interest in this 'Jedi rubbish' as well - after all, that's credits in your pocket, isn't it?"

Aphra let go of him with a rough shove, her glare practically hot enough to melt durasteel. "I should hand you over to Triple-Zero," she said, although what she meant by that he had no idea. He took a wary step back just in case she decided to punch him, cover be damned.

"I think you should open that door next," Ezra said, pointing indiscriminately. Or perhaps not so indiscriminately. As he turned his attention towards the direction his finger had landed on, he felt the Force… change there. There was a shadow dwelling behind that door, something that did not feel entirely like the Dark Side but certainly not like the Light either. Could the Jedi have something else hidden here? Could they have some kind of artefact of the Sith? It wasn't impossible - such things were often made to be difficult to destroy, and the old Order had thought it best to keep them wrapped up under lock and key where no unsuspecting Force-sensitive could get their hands on them by mistake.

Was this why the Dark Side had wanted him to help Luke? Because he would find _this_ in here?

"My _cover_ doesn't include taking orders from _you_ ," Aphra said in a fierce whisper. "You're the bad guy here, remember? _I_ am a simple, innocent smuggler who has taken a shine to our little Rebel pilot…"

"You two aren't fighting are you?" Luke said from the doorway to the side-room. Ezra and Aphra jumped away from each other.

"Of course not," Ezra said quickly, before Aphra could get a word in edgeways. "Your friend here was just telling me she might be able to get that door over there open too."

"That is _not_ what I said you little piece of…"

"Oh, hey," Luke interrupted. "That might be a good idea actually. That room does feel… different somehow." He frowned, clearly trying to analyse what he was feeling. Ezra hoped he wouldn't work it out. The kid probably wouldn't be best pleased to be helping the Sith - but he didn't have to know. And if he ended up taking a Dark Side holocron and using it, all the better!

"Fine," Aphra said, able to admit when she'd been beaten. "But I make no promises kid. That lock looks a lot trickier than the first one."

"I'm sure you'll try your best," Luke said. "And Artoo will help." He was so kriffing _trusting_. Ezra could understand why - Aphra herself didn't actually mean him any harm and so the Force wouldn't be giving him any signals - but still! Even if she had been nothing more than what she claimed to be it wouldn't have been a good idea to trust her! Ezra knew _plenty_ about the self-interest of criminals - he had been one himself, a very long time ago.

"I'll manage without the droid's help," Aphra said. That was a good way for her to play it, Ezra thought with some irritation. Pretend it was just because of professional pride, and not because she had no particular desire to open that door at all.

Aphra went over to start work on the blast door, the astromech warbling sadly at her, leaving Ezra and Luke standing in a slightly awkward silence.

"How exactly are you planning on taking all of this stuff out of here anyway?" Ezra asked after a moment. "There's too much here for you to carry."

"I'm going to be relying on Aphra a lot," Luke admitted. "And I hope the Force will tell me what it's most important for me to take. I know Aphra doesn't care about the Jedi, but if I promise her that the Rebel Alliance will give her a better price for all this than any of the collectors out there…"

"You're going to be disappointed," Ezra said. "All of this, the Jedi way… anyone who hasn't been brainwashed by them should be able to see it for what it is. You shouldn't be looking to follow in their footsteps."

"I'm following in my _father's_ footsteps," Luke replied. His determination was solid and steady, like a fixed point in the Force. Ezra's arguments alone would never be enough to convince him.

"Never mind," he said. "You'll change your mind, or you won't. If you do, I have no doubt the Inquisitorius would welcome you as one of us. If not…"

"If you're talking about Vader, I'm going to kill him first," Luke said. He really did mean it too. Didn't he know the first thing about Lord Vader? He wouldn't stand a chance.

But there was no use in trying to convince Luke of anything, not once he'd already made up his mind. Ezra hadn't known him very long, but it had been long enough to work _that_ much out. He sighed. "I'm… going to watch Aphra work," he said.

"Fine," Luke relied. "Just… try not to antagonise her."

 **0 ABY - YT-1300** _ **Millenium Falcon**_ **, Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

"I think we've lost them," Han said over the internal comms, bringing the _Falcon_ down out of the cloud cover. Leia unclipped herself from the gunner's seat and started to climb back up towards the cockpit. He seemed to be right; there was no sign of any of the _Starfall's_ TIE fighters. Some she had managed to destroy, the others seemed to have given up. If she had been their commander, she would have had them flying a search grid around the temple - their only logical destination - but she could only hope that the Imps would leave them for Vader to deal with.

"How far now?" she asked, once she had reached Han's side again.

"Ten kliks. Not long."

They were passing over a landscape of rivers and small islands thick with trees. Heavy mist floated over the water. Ahead were high hills; their best guess at where Vader's ship had touched down, based on his last position before he entered the cloud cover. The fact that she could just make out a number of towers rising from the forest up there only confirmed that her hunch had been correct. This was the place.

Han made a pass over the temple first, just to let them see the courtyard out front, crowded with ships. Luke's, Vader's… and another she didn't recognise. The one belonging to this 'Twelfth Brother'? It hardly looked Imperial, more like a smuggler's vessel with that worn paintwork and unusual configuration. Still, there was no sign of anyone out here, which meant that they just might be able to sneak on board that yacht and disable some vital systems.

"Where's Vader, that's what I want to know?" Han said. "Luke better still be in one piece, or _I'm_ going to kill him!"

"Focus on one thing at a time," Leia told him. "Sabotage the ship, _then_ we can find Luke."

The temple courtyard was large, but not _that_ large. They would need to find somewhere else to set down, which wouldn't be easy in this terrain. But they would have to make it soon. There was no guarantee how long Vader would stay inside that temple, and they _had_ to cut off his route of escape before the battle group arrived. It would be cutting it close, whatever way you looked at it.

 **0 ABY - the Temple's heart, Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

Luke could understand where Aphra was coming from. She was running from the Empire; she had good reason to dislike one of its agents, and he wasn't naive - he knew very well the kind of life smugglers lived. It wasn't one which had much understanding of mercy. He'd been lucky to grow up as isolated as he had on Tatooine. In the cities violence became a reflex, one triggered by the least bit of a threat. He'd seen people come to blows over the price of a meal at the market. Not many were quite as bad as that man who had picked a fight with him in the Mos Eisley bar for no apparent reason - he had honestly not been expecting _that_ \- but although Aphra was closer in character to Han than that guy, he didn't kid himself. Han had killed people before, when he'd needed to.

Only… it didn't _have_ to be like that. Tatooine was the way it was because of the Hutts, but there were plenty of worlds out there where things were different. And Ezra might be an Inquisitor, a Sith, an Imperial, but Luke had seen something more complicated than that in the temple visions. He didn't have to _like_ it, but Ezra did have his reasons. He was still a person. One who had shown that he could be trusted at least a little.

Aphra didn't have any need to worry.

Besides, some part of Luke did have to be thankful to Ezra for showing him how to reach this place. The centre of the temple was… well, he didn't know what he had expected, but this place lived up to his highest hopes. The world felt… still. Peaceful. Calm. It made all his worries feel a little further away. Here, the Force seemed to say, anything is possible. Just relax and… be.

In the little room that Aphra had unlocked, that feeling seemed particularly concentrated. There were holocrons in here, and lightsabers, and datacards, and other things that were more mysterious; curls of beads, strange medallions, scraps of fabric that might have been part of clothing… All these things left behind by Jedi who were long gone. History stretching back… who knew how many years!

He missed Ben. Ben had been a real Jedi, not him. Ben would have known what to do with these artifacts. He would have known which ones were the most important, the most in need of saving. He would have known the meaning behind them.

Luke had known _of_ Ben for what seemed like his whole life, but he had only _known_ him so briefly… and yet it still hurt so much that he was gone. Ben had offered him… hope. Hope of something more than a life on Tatooine, hope of finding out more about his father, hope of making a difference in the galaxy.

He sighed, hanging his head. Ben was gone and nothing could bring him back. He had heard his voice, from time to time in the months after his death, but that hadn't happened for some while now. Maybe he should accept that that voice had only been what he wanted to hear, rather than something real.

Ben would have wanted him to become a Jedi in truth. He would have wanted him to kill Darth Vader, for all the evil he had brought into the world. He should focus on here and now, and do his best to make Ben proud.

Artoo nudged his leg, beeping quietly. Luke patted the little droid, smiling. "I'm alright Artoo," he said. "I just… needed a moment." Artoo warbled in reply. It _was_ pretty soothing, Luke had to admit. He pushed what remained of his feelings away and went back through to the main chamber to check on Aphra's progress with the second door. She was kneeling next to it with her hands buried in a mess of wires, ignoring Ezra leaning against a nearby pillar and watching. So they _could_ get on for five minutes without killing each other.

And then Ezra leapt bolt upright, looking towards the passage they had entered from with sheer terror on his face. A chill went through Luke, a biting cold, and a harsh and all too familiar rasping filled his ears. He turned.

Darth Vader was standing there - _here_ , how can he be _here_ , said the thought that flashed through Luke's mind - his lightsaber drawn, the noise of his respirator seeming to fill the entire room. The blank, insectile eyes of his mask were fixed on Luke and the weight of his attention was pushing down all around him in the Force, suffocating.

Behind him, the door Aphra had been working on slid open with a hiss. Luke faintly heard the sound of her getting to her feet, the noise of satisfaction she made, but he felt frozen in place, unable to turn to look at her or speak to warn her. Artoo had started beeping frantically, but his alerts were far too late.

"Aphra," Vader said, and… what? He knew her _name_? "You have a great deal to explain to me."

"Oh, hi boss," Aphra said brightly. She wasn't even really afraid that Luke could sense. More… confused. And resigned. "I absolutely can do that. You see, it's all to do with your ronto-headed Inquisitor here and his complete inability to follow orders. _I_ was just trying to keep my cover intact."

She was… she was _working_ for Vader? Luke was paralysed by the shock, both of Aphra's words and by the fact that Vader was actually standing in front of him. How had he known? How had he tracked Luke here? And Aphra… the Force had told him that she didn't mean him any harm! Except… except that not meaning any harm didn't mean that she had his best interests at heart. She had just been here to delay him, hadn't she! Stop him from finding out about the Jedi and make sure he stayed in one place for long enough for Vader to get here and kill him personally! He thought he might actually be sick. It felt as though someone had punched him in the stomach. He had _trusted_ her - because of the Force, and because she reminded him of Han.

He unhooked his lightsaber from his belt. So Vader was here. Then it just meant they would have to fight sooner than Luke had planned. He might not have much chance of winning, but he still had to _try_. Perhaps he would get lucky. Besides, what were his other options? Just to give up and let Vader cut him down?

"Although I wasn't expecting you to show up so soon," Aphra continued.

"The Inspector is no longer of any concern," Vader told her, his helmet still turned in Luke's direction. It was impossible to tell just where he was looking behind the dark lenses, but Luke could still sense that he was watching him. But Vader's saber hadn't moved, and although the Dark Side was all around them like a thick blanket thrown over the world, heavy with a terrible anger, none of it seemed to be aimed at Luke. What was he waiting for? Did he want Luke to attack him first? "As for the Twelfth Brother…"

Vader's hand rose in that too-familiar gesture. Ezra let out a choked cry, and he was pulled forwards to hang in mid-air in front of the monstrous figure in black,, clawing at his throat. The fist tightened. "Let us see what you know," Vader said. Ezra's eyes went wide, and then rolled back in his head as he screamed - or tried to. The strangled noise that was all that managed to escape his throat was horrible to hear.

He couldn't just let this happen, Luke realised. Ezra had _helped_ him, had gone against Vader's wishes to do so, and he didn't deserve any of this! He _had_ to help! And what better time to make a move than when Vader was distracted?

His lightsaber ignited with a hiss and Luke leapt forwards, aiming straight at Vader's chest. For a moment he actually thought it might work, that Vader was too engaged in whatever he was doing to Ezra to notice, but almost faster than he could see it move the red blade snapped up and met his own with an angry buzz. Vader took a step back, letting Ezra drop so that he could face Luke properly.

"Do not be foolish, child," he said. Did that voice - distorted as it was by the vocoder - sound almost exasperated? "Do not attempt to fight me. The Force is with you, but you are not a Jedi yet."

"I don't care!" Luke yelled, trying another lunge. Vader batted it to one side with ease. "Do you think I'm just going to lie down and die?"

" _That_ is the last thing I would expect from Skywalker's son."

"How dare you even say my father's _name_!" He wasn't thinking anymore; it didn't matter that he had promised himself he wouldn't react like this again, he couldn't stop himself. Not with Vader right in front of him. He could only attack, over and over again, even though Vader parried each and every one, barely seeming to move. "You don't have the _right_ to say his name, you _killed him_!"

"I did _not_ ," Vader snapped, giving a sudden shove as their blades met again. Not expecting the strength behind it Luke staggered back, falling to the ground beside Ezra - who didn't seem to be conscious, but was at least still breathing. His lightsaber was knocked out of his hand, and then Aphra was there, kicking it away. Luke cursed, trying to scramble after it, but Aphra planted a boot against his shoulder and pushed him back.

"Aphra!" Vader growled. "The boy is _mine_."

"Apologies my lord," Aphra said, backing off and looking contrite. "I didn't mean to interfere."

"Obi-Wan lied to you," Vader said, addressing Luke again. "about many things."

"Do you really expect me to believe that?" Luke asked, slowly getting to his feet when it appeared Vader wasn't about to kill him immediately. "From _you_?"

"You have only to touch the Force to know that it is true."

Perhaps, but he had thought the same thing with Aphra. He'd thought she was telling the truth, because the Force told him her intentions were pure. And maybe to her they had been, but that hadn't stopped her being a liar, from betraying him. Yet he couldn't stop himself from reaching out. He _didn't_ believe it, but some part of him however small wanted to _know_. The Dark Side was everywhere, like ice just under his skin, but he could still feel the Light Side, even if it seemed so very far away. And the Force itself was singing, all of it singing with an utter confusion of emotion that didn't seem to be coming from _anyone_ here. It was as though the whole world held its breath.

"Then who _did_ kill him?" Luke demanded. "One of your _Inquisitors_?"

"No," Vader said. "He still lives."

" _You're lying!"_ But hope flickered inside Luke's chest, even though he knew, _he knew_ , it couldn't be true. If it was, where had his father been all these years? What reason could Ben have had not to tell him the truth? His father was _dead,_ as much as every part of him wished he wasn't.

"Luke," Vader said, slowly, as though hesitating. " _I_ am your father."

" _Holy Sith!"_ Aphra yelped, although Luke barely heard her or Artoo's accompanying beeps of shock over the roaring in his ears.

"No," he said, pleading against the way that the Force itself was crying out in joy, in triumph, in love and pain and a reflection of his own horror. "No. That's not true. That's _impossible._ "

Vader said nothing. He didn't have to. Not when what the Force was telling him was so inescapable.

Luke's eyes burned, and all the strength seemed to have gone out of him. He knew he was crying, but he couldn't seem to stop. He sank to his knees - it was all he could do not to fall over. How…? _How_ could this be true? His father had been a _hero_ , he had been Ben's _friend_ \- that's what the old man had told him. But he had lied about his father's death, so who knew what else he might have lied about? Why had he done it? How could Ben have let him find out like this?

Or perhaps he had been hoping that Luke would _never_ find out. Had Ben wanted him to kill his own father? Without knowing it? He was going to be sick… no, no he wouldn't let himself. He was stronger than this, he _was_ , he was going to _face_ the truth, not hide from it! But right now… right now he couldn't even look at Vader, his… his father…

Out of every sentient being in the galaxy, why did it have to be Vader? The monster, the durasteel fist of the Empire, the Emperor's right hand, the executioner… his aunt and uncle had died on his own father's orders… did Vader even _know_? Had he even _cared_? He had murdered them, he had tortured Princess Leia personally, he had killed so many of the Rebellion's fighters as they attempted to run the Death Star's trenches including Biggs, Luke's _best friend._

And he would have killed Luke there too, if it hadn't been for Han. Just as he would have killed him on Cymoon I not so long ago. So what had changed?

Or… had he somehow not known?

What… what if his father _hadn't_ known? Didn't that make the only sense? Why else show him mercy now when it had always been lacking before.

"Luke," Vader said, holding out his hand. "It is time to accept the destiny that Kenobi hid from you. I will teach you the ways of the Dark Side and together we will defeat the Emperor, and rule the galaxy as father and son."

"That is _not_ my destiny," Luke gasped, fighting the tightness in his throat that threatened to make his voice crack and waver. "I want _nothing_ to do with the Dark Side! I will _not_ become a _Sith_!"

"You do not have a choice, child. Without the strength of the Dark Side it is _impossible_ to defeat the Emperor."

"So why haven't _you_ killed him if that's true?" Luke spat. He felt his father hesitate.

"I cannot do it alone," Vader said.

Did his father really think this was what he wanted? Power? He wanted the Emperor gone, yes, but not so that he could rule in his place! He was fighting because of what the Empire did to people and planets across the galaxy every day. He was fighting because of what the Sith had done to his parents… or… what he'd _thought_ they had done. Luke felt as though the bedrock of his foundations had been washed out from underneath him. Suddenly everything that spun off from that truth seemed on shaky ground.

No. No, just think about it for longer than a second. Just because his father was alive and was the figure he had feared and hated, that did not change anything Vader had done, or that the Empire had done. All of it, it was still _wrong_. But he knew now that there was no way he would ever be able to kill Vader. He… he no longer _wanted_ to.

"And if I still refuse to become a Sith?" he asked.

Vader _snarled_. "Then the moment Sidious learns of your existence you will die!"

It was almost impossible to get any sense of his father through the Force - when Luke tried reaching out all he could feel was a vast and raging emptiness like looking into a Dune Seas sandstorm - and yet… it was almost as though he could feel _fear_. Was that actually real, or simply his imagination? If his father was offering this, even if Luke didn't want it, didn't that mean he _had_ to care for him in some way? If Luke didn't mean anything to him, then surely he would have killed him by now - wasn't Luke a Rebel, hadn't he destroyed the Death Star?

"There _has_ to be another way," he said quietly.

"There is _not_ ," Vader said. "You _must_ come with me. _Now_."

Luke hung his head. He was too tired to argue. Maybe later he would be able to fight again, would be able to persuade his father of… of something. But right now, he was alone, without any allies, and with no-one coming to save him. There wasn't any way to escape. Vader was right - one way or another, he would be going with him. Might as well do it on his own feet.

"Yes," he said.

The Skywalker kid was... what? Aphra could barely believe it. After all that nonsense with getting into the heart of the temple it had been practically a relief to see Lord Vader, even if she had _really_ been hoping he would never actually find out about this whole mess. But then he went and said something like _that_? How was that even possible? _Vader_ , have a _child_? He didn't seem the type. But then what did she or anyone really know about who he had been before the Empire? She had done her research - of course she had, she'd been about to start working for the guy - and Darth Vader had simply appeared as the Emperor's right hand not long after the Jedi Purges. It was common knowledge that he had been injured in the Emperor's service severely enough to need the life-support in his suit, but no-one knew how, or when, or who he had been before that. There was no mention of a Darth Vader in the records of the Old Republic.

Skywalker had said his father had been a Jedi. Was that true, or just something he had been told - probably by this 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' who Vader seemed so angry about.

And as for the kid himself… he wasn't exactly taking this well. In fact that was putting it mildly, not that Aphra could really blame him. This was one kriffing hell of a truth to find out about, and he was a _Rebel_. Which meant, an idealist with all sorts of ridiculous notions about how the galaxy should be run, barely in touch with the real world. Luke and Vader couldn't be more different. And clearly Luke hadn't had the faintest idea about who his father really was before this moment. Hell, he'd grown up on Tatooine hadn't he, and it would be difficult to find a place any further from the bright heart of Imperial power. So what was behind all that? Something to do with the Jedi, it seemed. Had they stolen the boy, kidnapped him when he was young, taken him to turn into one of their weapons?

If the stories about them had anything to say about it, it seemed more than possible.

A lot of things were falling into place now. Finding Skywalker… it had never been about the prestige of capturing or killing the pilot who destroyed the Death Star at all. It had been about finding Vader's son! And as she listened to Lord Vader's words, Aphra couldn't help but be even more impressed at the audacity of it all. Overthrowing the Emperor, taking his place… she had known that she'd been drawn into something big but even at her most imaginative she hadn't thought it would be a plan as ambitious as _this_!

Gradually Skywalker - or perhaps she should be thinking of him as Vader Junior? - seemed to be coming around to accepting the truth. He no longer looked as though he was about to keel over at any second. No, there was that stubbornness appearing again that had been giving her so much trouble. The fire was coming back into his eyes - just embers for now, but Aphra was sure he would be back to his usual infuriating self soon enough.

Hah! Let his father deal with that from now on - it should be entertaining to watch! _She_ wouldn't have to worry about it any more.

Luke got to his feet with the controlled breathing of someone trying to keep his emotions under wraps. He looked down at the Inquisitor, still lying where Vader had dropped him - and still alive from the looks of things.

"What are you going to do with him?" the kid asked quietly.

"He has acted very foolishly," Lord Vader replied. Aphra certainly agreed with _that_ statement - and she _had_ warned him. Maybe now they could actually kill the brat and be done with it.

"Don't," Luke said. "Don't kill him. Please."

It must have been the 'please' that did it. Lord Vader said nothing for a moment, although his vocoder did make a crackling noise that might have been the machine's attempt at translating a sigh. Then he nudged Bridger's prone body with his boot, eliciting a groan.

The Inquisitor opened his eyes, looked around blearily, and finally managed to drag himself upright enough to get into some strange position of respect - down on one knee with his right hand fisted over his heart. "Master… I…"

"I am not interested in your excuses," Vader said. "Do not think I am sparing your life because of _mercy_. I expect you to continue to be useful to me."

Bridger nodded, keeping his eyes down.

"You may rise."

Ezra did so, coughing a little and putting one hand to his throat. Aphra couldn't help feeling just a bit sympathetic - she remembered how much that choke hurt. Vader turned to leave, putting one hand firmly on Skywalker's shoulder to chivy him along, but the Inquisitor hesitated.

"Master…" he said - further proof in any had been needed that he wasn't the brightest bulb on the dashboard. "There's something you should see in that room."

However, Lord Vader must have decided that Bridger had enough of a survival instinct remaining not to trouble him with something of complete unimportance. Silently, he let go of Luke's shoulder and swept into the small chamber. Aphra couldn't see exactly what he was doing in there, but when he reappeared he was holding something in his hand - a little cube which seemed to be made out of some sort of dark crystal, surrounded by metal filigree. A Jedi artefact? It quickly disappeared into one of Vader's belt pouches.

" _Now_ ," Vader said in a tone that did not allow for any argument, "we are _leaving_."

Ezra regained consciousness slowly and uncomfortably. His head was pounding, his throat hurt, and so did the rest of him for that matter. It took a moment to remember where he was and what had been happening, but the moment he did he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Lord Vader. Vader was _here_. The traces of him still felt adhered to the inside of Ezra's skull where he had forced his way inside looking for answers. Even thinking felt raw and painful. The memories had been pulled out to the front of his mind, flicked through like a deck of Sabacc cards. Had he seen it all… including all the visions of the temple? It was difficult to be sure.

Ezra reached out to the Force, not quite feeling up to either moving or opening his eyes. Darth Vader's vast Force-presence was still nearby, a dark supernova of cold flame that surrounded the spitting, fierce light that was Luke.

Luke! _Karabas_. There were only two ways this could go, and Ezra knew which one he was expecting. He'd grown fond of the padawan, although he really shouldn't have. It was a pity he would be dead soon. Except… except that didn't seem to be happening. Instead they were… talking?

Ezra focused, forcing his tired mind to pay attention to the actual _words_ just in time to hear… what?

" _I_ am your father," Lord Vader said, and the Force rang with the truth of it.

 _How_? Luke had _told_ him who his father was and that was Anakin Skywalker - and that had been just as much the truth in the Force. The same Anakin Skywalker, Ezra thought with dawning horror, who had gone missing at the end of the Clone Wars. Kanan had told him that, told him that it was assumed he'd died defending the Temple. But… the last vision that he and Luke had seen had implied that Skywalker had died on Mustafar. Mustafar, a planet so steeped in the Dark Side… Not to mention that Darth Vader had first appeared not long after the Empire's founding, and _no-one_ knew from where. Could that mean… could the two really be one and the same?

Of course Jedi could become Sith, that wasn't in doubt, but… it seemed so unlikely that a Clone Wars General, a Republic hero, could be a Sith Lord. Yet hadn't he wondered how a Jedi, with all their poisonous philosophy, could have had a child in the first place? Wouldn't it make _sense_ that such a Jedi hadn't been a _real_ Jedi at all?

And if that was the case, then for how long? How long had Darth Vader been keeping up the pretense of the loyal Jedi? Had he been their spy inside the Order, the one who informed Lord Sidious of the plot against him? How horrible that must have been, to mouth their platitudes and wait for the day that the Sith could achieve ascendancy once again! And Luke… Luke who _should_ have been raised into the Inquisitorius… the Jedi must have learned about his existence. That explained the vision of Mustafar at least a little. Kenobi had learned the truth, had gone to Mustafar to find Luke's mother, lied to her about Skywalker's death, and spirited them away!

Ezra's head ached even more, his thoughts whirling as he put it all together. Wouldn't that have been just like a Jedi - they were well acquainted with stealing children! But now it would be alright, everything would be fixed. Luke would be taught the ways of the Dark Side, he would become a Lord of the Sith like his father and… to go by what Lord Vader was now saying - although Ezra's perception of the world still seemed to dissolve into white noise half the time - they would follow the old tradition and overthrow the Emperor.

There could be many Inquisitors, many potentials, many lesser Sith, but there could only be two Lords. The Master and the Apprentice. And having felt the strength of Luke in the Force, Ezra had no doubt that together, the Skywalkers would be able to do it.

Luke was no Tarkin, no Kallus. He would be good for this galaxy, Ezra knew it. It was… just a pity he wouldn't be around to see it. He had only been following his instincts and the Force, but he had still led Lord Vader's _son_ into danger. Darth Vader was not a forgiving man - there was no room for mercy on the thousand battlefields of the Empire. He had killed officers for a lot less.

They were talking about him, he realised. Luke was… he was asking his father to spare Ezra's life. He hadn't thought Luke liked him that much. He was an Imperial, and the Jedi had brainwashed Luke to hate the Empire. Why _wouldn't_ he want an Inquisitor dead? Still, there was no way Lord Vader would _grant_ that request. Except…

A heavy durasteel boot nudged him in the ribs. Ezra winced involuntarily, and then opened his eyes. The game was up; Lord Vader knew he was awake now and probably had before. He still hurt all over, but he managed to drag himself up onto his knees and into a position of appropriate respect. He wasn't going to assume that he was safe quite yet, and if he was going to die he could at least do so with some dignity.

"Master…" he said, the words scraping his throat raw. "I…"

"I am not interested in your excuses," Lord Vader said. The emanations of his cold, controlled anger were grinding against the tattered remnants of Ezra's mental shields, even though they weren't being directed at him personally. "Do not think I am sparing your life because of _mercy_. I expect you to continue to be useful to me."

Ezra nodded, keeping his eyes down.

"You may rise."

Maybe he really would survive today. Wouldn't that be something.

A random drift of thought - or perhaps a tendril of the Force working its way into his unprotected mind - made him remember what he had been so focused on before Lord Vader arrived. It… wouldn't be wise to bring it up surely, not when Vader was so angry at him but… it was _important_. If that was a Sith artefact in there… Lord Vader seemed to be willing to at least humour him that far, and swept past him into the little room. After scant moments he reappeared with a holocron - one made of dark crystal and steeped in the particular feel of the Dark Side.

He had been right! A small victory at least, in this otherwise terrible day.

" _Now_ ," Lord Vader said, "we are _leaving_."

There were no more visions to trouble their trek back through the temple corridors. The Light Side hung back, a watchful presence, but it made no move towards them. It had fulfilled its task, and presumably the Jedi of old had given it no instructions about those who were on their way out. Good. Ezra didn't think he could take anything _else_ happening today!

So of course, because the universe took that sort of statement as a challenge, when they finally came out into the wan light of this world's sun there were two strangers standing next to Aphra's freighter who _definitely_ shouldn't have been there.

"Leia! Han!" Luke shouted in alarm.

"Princess," Lord Vader said with a satisfied growl. "What a _pleasure_ to see you here."


	3. Chapter 3

**0 ABY - Temple courtyard, Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

This really _was_ a pretty ship, Han thought, as they headed back down the entry ramp. And a tough nut to crack - after taking so long hacking past the encryption just to get on board he hadn't relished trying to get into her computer systems as well. In the end it had been easier just to go with physical sabotage. It was a pity they'd had to do such terrible things to her engines, her hyperdrive, and her nav console. Particularly given how souped-up she was under the hood - it was actually a little scary. He knew less about yachts than he did about freighters, cruisers, and the other kind of vessels that smugglers usually used, but he knew enough to peg this one as a Nubian J-type, pre Clone Wars, which meant it must have been a _nightmare_ getting all those brand new off-market mods to sync up with her systems. Whoever had modded this baby really knew their stuff. Concealed weapons, upgraded sub-lights, layered shields, one _beast_ of a hyperdrive...

And _Vader_ , of all people, was flying around in this!

Han had been an Imp for just long enough to have picked up on at least some of the gossip about Darth Vader, including the story that said he did all his own maintenance on his TIE and just what had happened to the unlucky pit crew who _hadn't_ been clued in to that fact. He hadn't believed it before, but now… it made a man wonder. Still, why choose a _Nubian yacht_ as a pet project, unless it was for the sheer fact that _no-one_ would be expecting it? It made no kriffing sense!

But there wasn't any time to worry about it any longer, not when Luke was still out there somewhere. Vader was nowhere to be found, and the only place he _could_ be was that giant building in front of them - the one that Luke was bound to be in too. Sith-spit! Han would even pray to that hokey Force religion if it helped Luke stay alive.

"We need to do the same to this other ship too," the Princess told him, nodding towards the heavy freighter which was parked not far away. It wasn't a vessel Han recognised, but he didn't quite like the look of it. He felt that he _ought_ to know it, and that somehow its presence spelled bad news. But he couldn't think of any reason to give Leia aside from his gut instinct, which he was well aware wouldn't be good enough for her.

And then his bad feeling got a _lot_ worse.

"Leia! Han!" a familiar voice shouted. Han turned to see Luke standing on the steps of the temple with _Darth kriffing Vader's_ hand clasped tightly on his shoulder. Artoo was next to him, beeping frantically. There were another couple of beings with them as well; a woman dressed in fine smuggler fashion - had to be the owner of the second ship - and a young man in black with Imperial cogs on his shoulders. So that was the Inquisitor the Imps had been talking about. But they paled into insignificance next to the considerably _bigger_ problem that was Vader. Kriff it! Just who they had been hoping _not_ to run into.

At least Luke was still alive. He looked drained, his eyes ringed in red, but he was _alive_ and that was all that was important.

Vader let go of Luke and stalked forwards, unhooking his lightsaber from his belt. "Princess," he growled. "What a _pleasure_ to see you here." Han bristled. That was a threat if ever he'd heard one, and no-one got to threaten Leia Organa when he was around! He had his blaster out and up in one swift movement, and was aware out of the corner of his eye of Leia doing the same. He hadn't intended to start shooting just yet, but Leia wasn't one to wait, and so of course he had to join in.

Vader's red blade deflected the shots, and then his other hand came up and Han felt his blaster jerk right out of his hands, skidding across the courtyard well out of reach. Leia's landed right beside it. He swore. The _smart_ thing to do would be to make a run for it back to the _Falcon_ , but they hadn't had a chance to disable the freighter yet. Vader would still have the chance to get away, and there was no _way_ the Princess would retreat with that in mind. Behind Vader, Luke jerked forwards trying to make a run for it, but the smuggler grabbed him before he could get far, whispering something in his ear that seemed to drain some of the fight out of him - and that was just _wrong_.

There was a snap-hiss from beside him. Han nearly leapt out of his skin. Leia was holding a green lightsaber with a determined expression.

"You kept that?" he asked.

"I thought it might come in useful," Leia replied.

"You have no right to that weapon," Vader said, menacing. "Nor have you been trained in its use. Do not meddle in what you do not understand."

"I understand enough," Leia said.

I have had enough of foolish children for one day," Vader said, stalking towards them, his little _entourage_ following on a safe distance behind. "Get out of my way."

"And let you escape? No. Never."

"Do you care nothing for your young pilot's safety?"

"Luke can look after himself," Leia replied, with icy calm. "He knows what's at stake here. The Rebel Alliance would have to pay a very high price in lives indeed for it to no longer be worth seeing you dead."

"Such hate," Vader said. Han wasn't sure if it was meant to be mocking, or if Vader actually _admired_ that. He wasn't sure which was worse. "But the weapon of Alderaan's vengeance would better be pointed at one other than me."

"You were there. You watched."

Han thought he should try and take advantage of the distraction of Leia and Vader's showdown. There was still a ship to disable here, after all, and if he could just get up the ramp he could lock it from the inside. That would give him enough time…

"As did you," Vader said, still making no move. He didn't know that everyone here was on a deadline then. Otherwise he wouldn't be willing to try and… and do what, exactly? Win a war of words?

"I was _forced_ to watch!" Leia shouted. " _You_ forced me to watch! Don't pretend to me that you _cared_ about Alderaan's fate. You're a monster - you stood by and let it happen."

"It was a waste," Vader replied. "and it was unwise. Alderaan's death has only given strength to the Rebellion."

Han was nearly at the ramp. The smuggler and the Inquisitor were too far away to stop him… but they weren't trying. Han looked at them across the courtyard. The smuggler was actually smiling. What did she know that he didn't? Did she have some sort of trap set up in her ship? Hell, there was no way this was going to be as easy as he'd hoped. But what other options did he have?

He continued slowly backing up. Metal walls closed around him. It was dark in here. The vessel had been left idling on low power, with only the red-lights in the floor illuminating the room he was in. There were boxes stacked everywhere, blank crates that could have contained anything. It felt like all the hairs down his neck and spine were trying to leave his body. This did not feel like a good place to be.

In front of him, two new lights flicked on. The small round lights of a protocol droid's eyes. Han relaxed a little. Sure, protocol droids could be annoying, but one of them wouldn't be enough to stop him from sabotaging this ship.

"Now where's the kriffing hyperdrive control on this ship?" he asked himself under his breath.

"Oh, BT-1, we have a guest!" the droid said. It had the same irritating voice as Threepio. Maybe it was here to bother him to death? In the darkness, something whirred and clicked. What was that? Another droid?

"Oh no need for that Beetee," the protocol droid said. "There's only one of him, and it has been so long since Mistress Aphra gave us any toys to play with. You can have him after I'm done."

Han felt his stomach drop through his boots. Aphra - he knew that kriffing name. Smuggler and activator of archeotech for the Droid Gotra, weird fascination with weapons and particularly droids that were _also_ weapons. Which meant that _wasn't_ a protocol droid.

"My name is Triple-Zero," the droid said as it advanced on him. "And I shall be your torturer for today."

He ran.

* * *

He simply did not have time for this foolishness. Vader had no particular ill will for Princess Leia Organa - no more at least than he had for every member of the Rebellion - but her hatred for him was becoming troublesome. His first thought upon seeing her had been pleasure that at last he would get to _kill_ something on this blasted planet, but good sense had quickly prevailed. If Luke had not been present, he would have been free to get rid of her and her companion, but unfortunately his son knew these people. He had been working with them on Cymoon I, and if his son grew squeamish at the thought of killing an Inquisitor he had known for less than a day then he certainly would not stand idly by at the death of his friends.

Vader knew all too well how stubborn a Skywalker could be - although that had been another life. Another person. He was wiser now, but his son clearly was not. No matter. Luke had destroyed the Death Star - he was _capable_ of ending lives. They would merely have to work on his ability to do so whilst looking said lifeforms in the face.

He needed to get his son off this planet before the _Starfall_ thought to ask any more questions, such as what had happened to its Inquisitor - although if they had allowed a rebel ship to slip past them then perhaps they were not as observant as a ship of the Imperial Navy ought to be. He needed space, and time. He needed to have a proper conversation with Luke. It was clear that Kenobi had done a great deal of damage with his lies. His son had not taken the truth well.

Had he really had any reason to expect otherwise? For all of his life thus far, Luke had believed his father to be dead at Vader's hand. Kenobi had built him up as a target in the boy's mind, nurtured his hatred so that he would have the strength to kill him when the time came. How hypocritical of his old master! It seemed that in extremis, evenKenobi had found a use for hatred, despite the Jedi Code. Once again, Vader felt a small stab of satisfaction at killing him. The old man had not put up much of a fight, and his claim to greater power in death seemed to have come to nothing.

Once confronted with the reality of the situation, Luke had come to accept it, at least in part. He was still being stubborn on the subject of the Dark Side, but that would pass when he understood what it really meant. Then he would come to realise that there was only one path to follow into the future they both wanted.

But none of that was going to happen unless this _child_ got out of his way!

He had reached an impasse with Organa. He had hoped to goad her into an attack, get her close enough to safely disarm and subdue her, but her anger was cold and controlled. Admirable, but inconvenient. She was too clever to be caught out in that way. She might not know how to use that stolen lightsaber, but an untrained wielder was as much a danger to herself as to others. If he made the first move there was no guarantee of her safety.

As he gathered the Force to him in preparation for ripping the saber from her hands - an awkward prospect when she had so tight a grip on it - a scream tore through the tense silence. The smuggler - Solo - slid down the open ramp of the _Ark Angel_ , spasms rippling through his body and smoke rising from a patch of his jacket where the synth-leather had been burned through. Triple-Zero ambled down after him, his palms raised to display the shock pads built into them.

"No!" Luke cried. "Han!"

Vader spared a flicker of attention to reach out for Solo's presence in the Force - still alive. Merely stunned. Good, that left only the Princess… His son darted past him before he or any of the others could stop him. Damn the boy! Triple-Zero had no orders regarding him - he would not be safe from the droid!

"Shit," Aphra murmured behind him.

"Go!" Vader ordered. She did as she was told, Artoo following her. Good; it would be the safest place for the astromech. Princess Organa took a step backwards, clearly thinking of heading towards Solo as well, even though her eyes remained fixed on him. She had looked away at Solo's cry, and he had felt the flicker of her worry in the Force, but she did not allow her attachments to over-rule her head. Had she been Force-sensitive, she would have made a good Jedi - or a better Sith, given the strength of her anger. With a single wrench Vader ripped up the massive flagstones for several meters all around her, tipping them on their ends and trapping her inside a wall of stone. It would not take her long to work out how to use the saber to cut her way out, but it would give him _time_.

"Triple-Zero!" he heard Aphra shout. "Stand down! Override voiceprint 'Aphra': add new master designation Luke Skywalker!"

"Confirmed Mistress Aphra," Triple-Zero replied. Vader relaxed slightly. He circled the flagstones, heading for the _Ark Angel_. "I _do_ still have permission to drain this other meatbag of his blood though, don't I?"

[Don't you karking dare, slagging piece of scrap!] Artoo beeped furiously. The little droid - _his_ little droid - was guarding Solo's body furiously, shock probe extended and crackling. It appeared Kenobi had passed on more than his old lightsaber to the boy.

"Denied," Vader growled to the assassin droid, stopping next to his son and grasping the boy's shoulder once again. It seemed he would need to keep a literal hold on Luke to prevent him running off. "Board the ship. Aphra, take the Inquisitor with you. Luke and I will meet you at a location I shall transmit to you once we are away."

"What about Han?" Luke said, trying and failing to shake out of his grip. "He needs medical attention!"

"Sadly, he will survive without it," Triple-Zero replied. "Master Vader, I suspect he was boarding the _Ark Angel_ to carry out some form of sabotage. I did not activate until his intrusion - I cannot comment on if he has done the same to your own vessel."

"Lord Vader!" It was the Twelfth Brother. He held up his comm-link. "The _Starfall -_ it's under attack! An entire Rebel battle-group! They're holding as best they can, but they won't be able to last long against that kind of firepower!"

As it always seemed to on such occasions, time slowed down. Their tactical situation spread out before him like an array of disparate parts as his mind picked through them, turning them this way and that, analysing, working out how to fit them together into the best configuration, the way to _win_. He made his decision.

"Aphra, board the _Ark Angel_ with the Inquisitor. Circle around to the other side of the planet and head into orbit from there. Take the Artoo unit with you." As much as he would have like to bring Artoo with him and find out where the droid had been all these years, Artoo simply would not be able to keep up over this terrain even with his rockets. He reached out with the Force and levitated the unconscious body of Solo into the air, draping him over his shoulder so he would be easier to carry. "We will make our own escape on Solo's ship."

And if Solo had so much as _touched_ his ( _Padmé's_ ) yacht then even Luke's attachment to him would not save him.

 _I will come back for her Padmé. I promise you_.

A segment of stone crashed to the ground. Organa had succeeded in her escape.

"If you wish to preserve the life of your friends Luke, you will follow me," he said. He had scouted the area from the air before landing - that much was habit when entering unfamiliar territory. There was only one clearing nearby large enough for a YT-1300.

He would deal with the Princess at a later date.

* * *

Luke's head was spinning. Everything seemed to be happening so fast, and his mind was so packed full of thoughts that he could barely even focus on any one in particular. His father was alive, his father was Vader, everything he had been told of his past was a lie - all of it except what the temple had showed him… And now here he was, running at his father's side, one of his friends being held as a hostage, the other left behind - but safe. Alive. Because of him. Because Vader seemed to care enough about what he thought to show a mercy that was utterly alien to his reputation.

It hurt, having to leave Leia behind, but she would be okay. And better there than with them. He didn't know what his father had planned for Han, but he was dreading the possibilities.

When he had seen the two of them outside the temple, Luke had barely been able to control his fear. He'd thought that he would have to watch his friends being killed in front of him. When it hadn't happened, when Vader had held back, he'd been able to relax enough to wonder what on earth they were doing here. He had told them he'd be coming to Vrogas Vas, of course, but what could have made them come to get him? Unless it wasn't him they were here for…

There hadn't been any sign of the _Falcon_ around either, but there had been a new ship sitting in the courtyard - a _Nubian_ ship. Not the same as the one he had seen in his vision, which had been a little smaller in the body with wide-swept wings like a sand-ray. This was an earlier model in the same J-type line, a sleek silver dart large enough for a retinue - not just a personal yacht. It didn't look _anything_ like a Rebel ship. It was far too flashy. So that really only left one person it could belong to. His father. And Aphra's droid Triple-Zero had confirmed that too.

Luke was going to have a number of questions about that ship, once he got half a chance.

Then things had started to go wrong. Leia had kept one of the lightsabers they'd stolen from Grakkus and she had challenged Vader with it. Han had tried to get inside Aphra's ship, and run into Triple-Zero, who was some kind of horrible Imperial torture droid. And now Han was unconscious and their captive, and there was apparently a whole Alliance battle-group in orbit waiting for his father.

Which was why they were now running for the _Falcon_. It wasn't easy keeping up with Vader. Luke wouldn't have thought he could move so quickly, as big as he was, and as heavy as the armour must make him. When he had encountered him before, his father had never _rushed_ anywhere - he hadn't been _slow_ , but neither had he made any movement more than the minimum necessary to achieve his aims. Now though the Dark Side was burning all around him, flowing through him, and Luke felt sure he wasn't pushing himself half as hard as he could have if Luke wasn't there.

The forest flashed past. They were leaping over uneven ground, fallen trees and branches, whipping past undergrowth that threatened to tangle. Luke half-slid down a muddy bank that Vader had simply jumped, leaving a crater in the ground where he'd landed, and felt an invisible hand in the Force reach out to steady him. Vader didn't say anything about it, just kept going, Han still held tight and unmoving over his shoulder as easily as though his body was stuffed with feathers. Luke panted for breath. At least the weariness threatening to flood him had quieted his mind. All he could think about was his sore muscles, the need to keep himself upright, to _move_. And yet, the further they went, the easier it seemed to become. As though something outside him was giving him strength.

He jumped over a dip in the ground that could easily have twisted his ankle without even noticing that it was there. He could almost _feel_ the world around them, as though his awareness of himself had jumped the bounds of his body and was stretching out… to the trees, to the plants, to sparks of life that _glowed_ in a sense that wasn't quite sight but was almost...

He was reaching out to the Force, Luke realised. He hadn't thought about it, hadn't meant to, but in the effort and the need to keep up with Vader he had done it instinctively. But in realising what he was doing, he felt the awareness and the strength draining away as though examining it too closely had disrupted the delicate connection.

 _Stop it_ , he told himself. _Don't think about it then!_

But he didn't need to hold it much longer. They burst into a clearing the next moment and Luke saw the familiar and welcome sight of the _Millennium Falcon_ in front of them. Vader gestured, and the landing ramp hissed downwards. Luke followed his father up and into the ship, smiling at the familiar corridor sweeping round to the cabin, the clank of his boots on the metal plating underfoot with that hollow ring from the holds concealed beneath. Vader did not waste any time. The Force seemed to be telling him where to go. He dropped Han on the bunk in the main cabin and swept back through the corridor, down the side passage into the cockpit, booting up the engines and the nav systems. Luke hung back in the cabin, throwing glances towards Han, who still showed no signs of moving.

Had the droid hit him with something like a stun-bolt? Those could take a few hours to wear off. But what if it was something different? What if it had done some real damage?

He wasn't doing any good here. He followed the path Vader had taken and joined him in the cockpit.

"Your fretting is needless," his father said from the pilot's chair, as though reading his mind. "He will wake shortly."

"And then?" Luke asked.

"That is up to you," Vader replied.

"I already gave my word I was going to come with you, didn't I?" Luke said. He would really rather not have Han held as a hostage to his good behaviour.

Vader's silence spoke more powerfully than words as to what he thought of that promise. Admittedly, in his place Luke wouldn't exactly trust himself either. Luke sighed, and went to strap himself into the co-pilot's seat, at least until they had left the planet's gravity well and could let the _Falcon'_ s own internal grav generators take over. He wanted to be able to see what was going on in the meantime.

And it wasn't _unpleasant_ exactly to have his father's presence next to him. It should have been; Vader was a burning sun of cold, dark fire. The Dark Side had always made him faintly uneasy before - it was clinging, clammy, intrusive and icy - but here and now it seemed to be keeping its distance. It was all around him, but not _touching_ him.

The _Falcon_ lifted off smoothly, arcing upwards towards the deep blue sky and space beyond.

* * *

 **0 ABY - Temple courtyard, Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

Leia deactivated the lightsaber and shoved it back in her jacket pocket, trying to control her anger. They had been _so close_. She hadn't been expecting that trick of Vader's, and she hadn't been expecting him to have allies other than the Inquisitor on the planet's surface. Now he had _two_ hostages, and he would reach the _Falcon_ before long. Even if the fleet hailed them on their way out of the system, she had no doubt that with Han's life at stake Vader would be able to persuade Luke to give them the all clear.

They had lost him. They had lost their chance. And Luke and Han… Vader had them.

Kriff it! Leia knew very well what happened to rebels when Vader was involved. Just thinking about it… the sharp tang of antiseptic hit her nostrils, she heard the heavy rasp of Vader's breathing bouncing of the walls of the small cell, felt the prick of the needle in her arm… She shook her head, trying to force the memory out of her mind. It was easy to let it take over her - it always felt so real. She came back to herself with a cold sweat sticking her clothes to her.

What would Vader do with his great _prize_? Imp rumours said that he had been out of favour with Palpatine since the destruction of the Death Star, so no doubt he would be hoping to capitalise on capturing the pilot who had been the cause of that. Drag him back to Imperial Center for a grand, public execution. Prove to the Empire that appropriate revenge had been meted out. Even if she hadn't been burning with the desire to rescue Luke and Han - although she really shouldn't care about that scruffy nerf-herder as much as she did - it was only good tactical sense to do so. The Rebel Alliance couldn't afford to give the Empire this kind of propaganda victory.

Her own personal comms wouldn't be strong enough to reach the fleet in orbit. That 'Aphra' person's ship had already been gone by the time she cut her way out of that prison of Vader's. Which only left the yacht they had already finished sabotaging - _including_ its comm system.

Swearing under her breath, Leia headed towards the ship to start undoing some of the damage she and Han had done.

* * *

 **0 ABY - YT-1300** _ **Millenium Falcon**_ **, in hyperspace**

He hurt _everywhere_. Han opened his eyes, blinking blearily, trying to force the blurry world around him into focus. He was… lying down. On the bunk in the _Falcon's_ cabin, in fact. He would recognise that lumpy mattress anywhere. What had happened? The last thing he remembered was droid eyes in the dark, and a sharp stab of pain that had rippled through his body turning all his muscles into tight arcs of agony. Then… nothing.

Han tried to get up and ended up rolling out of the bunk, landing on the floor with a heavy thud. Someone swore in Huttese, and a hand landed on his shoulder, another helping him up. He found himself being sat down on the edge of the bed. His head was spinning and he felt weak as a pooka-kitten.

"Are you okay?" the same person asked. Han managed to look up without losing his balance.

"Luke?" he said. "Shouldn't I be asking _you_ that question?"

The kid smiled. He still looked terrible, but right now Han wasn't one to talk. He probably didn't look much better.

"What in the Sith hells _happened_?" Han asked. "How did we escape from Vader?"

"About that…" Luke said, sounding awkward. "He's actually the one flying the _Falcon_ right now."

" _What?_ " Han yelled, and immediately regretted it. He hadn't though it was possible for his head to hurt any more than it had, but it looked like he was exploring new vistas of pain today. He continued at a much lower volume. "How could you let a monster like that touch my baby?"

Luke sighed. "There's so much that I need to explain," he said. Poor kid sounded like the whole world was weighing on his shoulders. Not that anyone would be in the best of moods after being captured by Vader.

"How about you start with what went down after I got knocked out?"

"Yeah… that was Triple-Zero. Apparently he's one of Aphra's droids."

"A menace is what he is. I never liked assassin droids. Go around pretending to be bounty hunters - what do they even spend the credits on, I ask you?" That got a little smile out of Luke. Not as much of one as he'd have liked, mind.

"He got you with some kind of electrical shock charge," Luke explained. "Stunned you pretty good. I ran over to see if you were okay, and Aphra called Triple-Zee off. Vader trapped Leia by using the Force to lift up all the flagstones - I've never seen anything like it! Then Ezra told us the _Starfall_ was being attacked by the Alliance…"

"Wait," Han interrupted him. "Who's Ezra?"

"Oh, the Inquisitor," Luke explained.

"The _Inquisitor_? One of those weird ISB special agents? You're on first name basis with an Inquisitor now are you?"

"He's not so bad." Luke shrugged. "He means well. But he's been brainwashed, for _years_ , to think the only way to do the right thing is to play along with the Empire."

"Yeah, and how do you know that? He tell you the whole sob story did he?" What was going _on_ here? Luke had a big heart, that was obvious about the kid, but going around feeling sorry for an _Imp_?

"I _saw_ it Han! The Temple… it showed us these visions…"

"Now I know you've gotta be kidding me." Han rolled his eyes - or did as much as his pounding head would let him. "More of this hokey religious stuff?"

Luke sighed. "Never mind. I guess it doesn't matter right now. Anyway, he told us about the Alliance's attack - which I guess explains why you and Leia were there - and Vader decided we would take you and the _Falcon_ to get past the blockade."

"There's a bit too much _'we'_ going around for my liking," Han said under his breath. Luke didn't reply. In fact, he wouldn't meet Han's eyes. Well, he really didn't want to put too much thought into analysing that right now. "So they're all here? Aphra and that Inquisitor too?"

"No, they took Aphra's ship and made a run for it from the other hemisphere," Luke replied. "I guess they thought a smuggler's freighter would get less attention - and it seems to have worked."

"So we're in hyperspace. Great. Any idea of the destination?"

Luke shook his head. "I didn't get a look at the navigation computers. Sorry Han. I have no idea where he's taking us."

It _had_ been a bit much to hope for. "What now kid?" he asked. "I sure hope you've got some bright idea to get us out of this, because right now my head feels like a Hutt is sitting on it."

Luke laughed, but it was short and kind of miserable. "Yeah, that's… I sort of promised I'd go with Vader."

" _What?_ " Han tried to stand up automatically, and regretted it. "Why would you do a damn fool thing like that? You've gotta stop surprising me like that kid. Every time I move too quick the whole room starts spinning."

"I knew we should be getting you some real medical attention," Luke said, sounding worried.

"Nah, it's okay." He hadn't meant to cause the kid any concern. Sure, he didn't exactly feel great, but it was nothing a bit of rest wouldn't cure. "Skull thick as the _Falcon's_ hull, that's me."

Luke sighed. "I just… don't know what he's going to do to you," he said quietly.

"Don't worry so much about me," Han told him. "Spare some thought for your own hide, alright. Hell, when we turned up and saw Vader'd already gone inside the temple, I thought for sure we were going to find you dead!"

"He's not going to hurt me," Luke replied, sounding strangely confident about that fact. "Not now…"

"Not now what?" Han asked suspiciously. Luke was avoiding his gaze again. Just what had happened inside that temple? Luke simply wasn't acting like himself. That Sith bastard had killed his father, after all. By now he should have been doing something foolhardy like challenging Vader to a duel. Not that Han wanted to encourage that sort of thing, but the fact that he wasn't having to sit on an angry Skywalker to stop him charging off was just unnatural.

"You're not going to like this Han," Luke said, dragging a hand through his hair. "I'm still not sure how to feel about it myself."

"See, now you've got to tell me."

"Just… try not to over-react, okay?"

"This is sounding worse and worse."

"Vader didn't kill my father."

Han frowned. "Hey, that sounds like _good_ news. So the old man's still out there somewhere?"

Luke fidgeted. "Um. Try, the next room over."

"Luke…"

"Vader's my father," Luke said very quickly.

Han laughed. He couldn't help it - it was just too ridiculous an idea. "Luke, kid, there's just no _way_ that's true. I don't know what kriffing reason Vader might have for telling you that, but it's obviously a lie."

Luke shook his head. "Some part of me wishes it was. That would make everything so much simpler. But it's the truth."

Han stared at him. Damn, but the kid really believed it. "What makes you so sure about it?" he asked.

"The Force," Luke said, with a stubborn set to his jaw that said he knew very well what Han was going to think about _that_ answer.

"Really?" Han said, raising an eyebrow. " _Really_?"

"Yes, really!" Luke said, scowling. "And the way he's acted since telling me… I think he must have only found out I even existed recently, because he didn't know who I was back on Cymoon I."

"Oh, you mean the time he tried to _kill you_ ," Han pointed out. "I think all this Jedi stuff has knocked a screw loose up in there, because this makes as much sense as a dancing gundark."

"Han, just… stop," Luke said. "Just. Trust me. Believe that I know what I'm talking about, even if it doesn't make sense to you."

"Luke… I'm sorry." Now Han felt like a real jerk. The kid had enough on his shoulders, and Han wasn't about to change his mind about something he felt so strongly was true, not like this. "All I'm saying is that this is the kind of situation where you should demand a DNA test before you get too caught up in the whole mess."

Luke seemed to decided it would be better to change the subject. "How did you and Leia even know that Vader was coming to Vrogas Vas anyway?" he asked.

"That is something I would _also_ like to know," a too-familiar, deep voice said from the entrance to the cabin. Han glared. Vader. It was just _wrong_ seeing him in the _Falcon_.

"Have you been listening to that whole conversation?" Luke asked angrily.

"You have never been taught to shield your mind," Vader said. Luke flushed. Was Vader really trying to suggest that he was able to read minds? Yeah, right.

"Well?" Vader said menacingly to Han, when no answer was forthcoming. Sithspit! Although… given the particular nature of their source it probably wouldn't hurt the Alliance in any way for him to tell the truth. And Han liked his throat in an open, non-suffocating condition.

"Some slimeball of an Imperial by the name of Karbin," he said. "Not a great friend of yours, I take it."

Vader didn't appear to react in any way that Han could see, but in some ways that was actually more frightening. He wouldn't want to be in that Imp's shoes when Vader came calling.

"We shall leave hyperspace in four hours," Vader said eventually. "Luke." He strode past them, clearly expecting Luke to follow him. Luke shot Han an apologetic look, and followed the man he believed to be his father. If they were going off to have a little private talk, then Han hoped that the kid would at least have the sense to ask some slightly more discerning questions.

Sighing, he made himself comfortable on the bunk. Four hours was plenty of time to get a little more sleep.

* * *

 **0 ABY -** _ **Ark Angel**_ **, in hyperspace**

Artoo was not happy with this ship, its humans, or the other droids on board. He had been separated from his People, not that anyone had asked his Force-damned opinion about it, and now they weren't even permitting him to do anything _useful_. He was a karking _astromech_ , for the Force's sake. More of an astromech than the Sithspawn murder-bot rolling around pretending to be one. That glitching, slag-bound piece of scrap code wouldn't know a navcomp if it was jacked right into its kriffing central processor. He _should_ have been with Luke-designation Skywalker 2.0 but…

But Anakin had told him no.

Artoo hadn't recognised His-Anakin at first, not with the new bodywork upgrades, not until the creature he had previously been designating kriffing big-droid/?not-droid had revealed its relationship to Luke. Afterwards Luke and all the other humans had seemed to accept this as accurate, so Artoo had come to believe himself that it must be true. His-Anakin hadn't acknowledged _him_ either, but Artoo was sure there was a good damned reason for this. Perhaps His-Anakin was in trouble? It might explain why His-Anakin hadn't retrieved him or Threepio in all the years they had been loaned to Not-Master Bail-Organa. So he had just followed on behind the two extra meatbags and waited to see what would happen.

Bad Things, seemed to be the answer to that kriffing question. It appeared that Artoo's work with the Alliance to Restore the Republic was at an end, since neither Luke or His-Anakin were on that group's side anymore. That didn't seem right. Artoo had enjoyed the Alliance, and Bail-Organa hadn't been too bad; there had always been plenty for him to do. But he trusted His-Anakin. The thought of going against him in any way felt foreign to his processor.

That meant when Smuggler-Aphra had been told to bring him aboard, Artoo hadn't made a fuss. He'd followed her and the Sithling onto the freighter only to discover a pair of very kriffing disagreeable droids. It wasn't that he didn't understand the occasional urge to murder the occasional offensive organic, but unlike those two, Artoo had been programmed with a proper sense of Force-damned right and wrong. Beetee and Triple-Zero were only barely restrained from outright chaos.

 _And_ they were karking rude.

Artoo found a convenient corner to lurk in and sulked. It was possible to take some comfort from the knowledge that it wouldn't be forever. This ship designation- _Ark Angel_ would rejoin his People, and then he would be with His-Anakin again. Things would be better then.

Things had _better_ be better then.

* * *

 **0 ABY -** _ **Millennium Falcon**_ **, in hyperspace**

Han seemed to be okay, at least for the moment. That was one weight off Luke's mind, but there was still so many questions, so much uncertainty, all mixed with a good dose of fear. Fear for himself, fear for Han… Vader hadn't hurt either of them yet, but surely it could only be a matter of time? Vader might be his father, but that didn't change who he was. What he was capable of. The Dark Side was fear and pain and anger, and Vader wanted him to become part of that. Seemed to think he would _need_ to become a part of that.

If his father thought it was necessary to keep Luke alive, what might he be prepared to do to him or his friends?

Given that Han was remaining in the main cabin, the only place to go for some privacy was the cargo bay. Luke followed Vader into the empty hold with a certain amount of trepidation. He had so many questions, but where to begin? And would he even like the answers? He knew so little about his past and everything he had _thought_ he knew had turned out to be only lies. All his ideas about his father… had Vader ever been anything like the man he had built up in his head?

"What _precisely_ did Kenobi tell you about Anakin Skywalker?" Vader asked him, taking up a position in the center of the cargo bay with his arms held behind his back like a general inspecting troops. Luke was sure it wasn't _meant_ to intimidate him, but it certainly wasn't helping his nervousness, or the sick feeling in his stomach. Was he prepared for the truth?

"He didn't tell me very much," Luke replied. "He told me that he had fought with my father during the Clone Wars, that they were both Jedi Knights - which was more than Uncle Owen told me! _He_ said that my father was a navigator on a spice freighter."

Luke wasn't sure, but it seemed to him that Vader was becoming easier for him to read as time went on. Looking purposefully through the Force still got him nothing more than the roar of desert winds, but… he didn't know how to explain it. He _did_ sense amusement - not a pleasant kind of amusement, but spiteful. "It seems my old master had grown humble in his dotage. Kenobi was a Jedi Master, and a member of the Jedi Council."

"I don't really understand what that means," Luke admitted.

"He was complicit in all of the Council's lies," his father told him. Around them the Dark Side seemed to grow thicker, leaching the heat from the room. Luke suppressed a shiver. "In their betrayal."

"In what betrayal? What lies?"

"You have already heard this from the Twelfth Brother. Perhaps you will now believe it when it comes from one who was there."

"You mean all of that about the Jedi stealing children and plotting to overthrow the government and… something about attachment?" Luke frowned. "It just… it all seems very hard to believe. I mean Ben - that is, Obi-Wan - he was a good man! He wouldn't have been part of something like that."

"I suspect the council had not yet told of him the depths of their treachery against the Emperor," Vader said. "As to the rest…" The pause was punctuated only by ever-present noise of the respirator. "When Kenobi and his master came to Tatooine I was nine. Kenobi believed I should not be taught the ways of the Force because I was too old."

Luke couldn't conceal his surprise. First that _nine_ was considered too old for the Jedi - but hadn't Ben promised to teach _him_ , when he wasn't too far off twenty? - and secondly to get that confirmation that his father really _had_ been from Tatooine. He had been starting to think even that might have been a lie, along with everything his aunt and uncle had told him about his family, about his grandmother. This only gave him more questions to ask!

But stay on track. "So what changed his mind?" he asked.

"The death of his master, Qui-Gon Jinn," Vader said. "A promise made to a dying man."

"You mean he trained you because he felt he had to?" That was an uncomfortable thought.

"In the face of his new-found stubbornness, the Jedi Council were also forced to relent, if only partly. They never felt I belonged there, but they were eager enough to take advantage of my strength in the Force."

"So this council, whoever they were, thought you were too old as well?" Luke might have doubted it, but the Force was telling him that nothing his father had said so far had been untrue - or at least, not untrue as his father perceived it. He felt frustrated, at himself and at the Jedi, and he was starting to doubt. If Jedi had to be taken for teaching so young… that couldn't be an easy choice for their parents. What if they refused? What if the Jedi wouldn't accept that? What if Ezra really _had_ been telling the truth, about this at least? What if the Jedi _hadn't_ been as good as he'd thought? "What would they have done instead of training you? Just left you on Tatooine?"

"Irrelevant," his father said, after a pause which went on just slightly too long. "What else did Kenobi tell you?"

"You're avoiding the question," Luke said, suddenly suspicious. He could sense… hesitation? Pain?

"I do not wish to discuss my childhood." The temperature dropped another few degrees. Luke half expected to see his breath coming out as mist. It was understandable though, wasn't it? Aunt Beru had told him stories when he was young about Owen's father Cliegg; how he had fallen in love with Luke's grandmother and freed her so they could marry. She had told him about Shmi's life before that. She and Shmi had been close, before she died. Beru had even mentioned Anakin Skywalker, despite the fact that Owen and Beru refused to talk about him most of the time (and had _they_ known the truth, was that why?). Luke had always known his father had been a slave, before he'd managed to win the money for his freedom in the Boonta Eve Classic podrace.

Luke thought he had maybe been half-hoping that it _wasn't_ true, that his father _hadn't_ been a slave - not because he was _ashamed_ of it, not when so many people on Tatooine had slave ancestry - but because he was well aware how slaves were treated on Tatooine. People said that the Empire had actually improved things a little, if only because they disapproved of slavery when the slaves were human - but the Empire's reach in the Outer Rim was limited. There were still thousands of of people all over the planet who _belonged_ to someone.

"Your thoughts betray you," his father said. "Owen and Beru Lars told you."

"Some," Luke admitted. "Mostly they told me about my grandmother. We don't have to talk about it."

"Kenobi was bold to leave you with them," Vader said. "It is strange that he did not keep you himself, to be raised as a Jedi."

"I've wondered that myself," Luke replied. "But I never got a chance to ask him. What else did he even tell me - hardly anything! He told me about the Force, about the Jedi and the Sith. He gave me your old lightsaber, and he told me that _lie_."

"He wished for you to kill me," his father said. Another pulse of dark anger, another swirl of biting cold.

Luke didn't know if that was true, but it was nothing he hadn't thought for himself. The possibility was painful, sitting in his stomach like a lead ball. "I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe."

"He has failed," Vader said, his rage dissipating slightly. Luke felt a sense of triumph replace it, although… strangely passionless. There didn't seem to be much joy in it. "I sense you no longer have it in your heart to destroy me."

"No. I could never kill you, father."

There was joy that time, a fierce burst of it that set the dark clouds in the Force gently spinning, lightening. The room warmed a little. "You have your own doubts about me, my son," Vader said. "Know this; I will _never_ allow you to come to harm, by my hand or any others'." That too was truth. Truth as Vader saw it, at least.

"You don't think trying to turn me to the Dark Side will hurt me?" Luke asked, challenging. His father took some time to think about that. Good! Maybe he would see somehow that what he was doing was _wrong_.

"You are already angry," Vader said eventually. "Against the Empire and Sidious. You need only to learn how to use your anger, to channel it. You can draw your strength through pain that already exists. There is no need to create more."

"Does that mean you'll let Han go? You won't hurt him to make me do what you want?"

His father's vocoder crackled - an approximation of a sigh. "He will serve me better as a bargaining chip against the Princess."

"What do you mean?" Luke asked, suddenly suspicious.

"The Rebel Alliance has my ship." More anger. Was his father ever _not_ angry? "Organa cares about this smuggler, and he is likely to have some knowledge of the Rebellion which could prove useful. It would be a fair trade."

Luke relaxed very slightly. That would probably be the best outcome all round. But after Han was gone… he'd be all alone again. It seemed likely that he would never see Han, Leia, Chewie or _anyone_ ever again. Even if he did, would _they_ be safe from _him_?

"When we drop out of hyperspace, you will instruct Solo to establish the connection," Vader said. "If all goes well, the exchange will be made and we will be free to travel onwards to our final destination."

"Which is where, exactly?"

"Vjun."

The name meant nothing to Luke, but it tickled something in the Force. He had no idea what, though.

"I still have so many questions," he said. "But I need some time to think first." He wanted to ask about the Nubian ship, he wanted to ask about his mother, he wanted to ask just what had happened to make his father turn against the Jedi and join the Sith… but the answers to all those questions were likely to contain yet more revelations that would be hard to process.

"Rejoin your friend then," his father told him. "I will meditate."

* * *

Meditation would certainly be necessary, for talking with his son had reminded him of his past and the person he had once been. A few short months ago he would have said nothing remained of Anakin Skywalker within him. Every tie to that existence had been lost. Only the Sith remained - and that had been what he wanted. Then he had found out about Luke and that had changed _everything_. But with his son came old memories he had not cared to look at in years. Were he a better Sith - as his Master had often told him - he would have used the pain and anger of those memories to his advantage, as fuel for his power. Yet although he was stronger than he had been as a Jedi, he was still weaker than he should be. Than he _needed_ to be.

In the emptiness after Padmé's death, Sidious had been the only thing left and it had been irrelevant how he felt about his Master's orders. Sidious had never lied to him, and Vader had never been one for politics. Often he did not see how the campaigns, the battles, the deaths benefited their Empire, but he trusted his Master. He _had_ trusted his Master. Until he found out about Luke and his entire world had rearranged itself around this new center. The small things that had troubled him about Sidious were now all the excuse he needed. With his son at his side, the Emperor would die, and they could remake the Empire as it had always been intended. Strength. Order. A perfect jewel he had once - in a wild moment of triumph and emotion - intended to give to Padmé.

Now he would give it to Luke.

Much work would have to be done to get to that point however. Sidious held power in a thousand ways, his webs strung across the galaxy like the hyperspace lanes. Vader might have had a hand in the final training of each operative of the Inquisitorius, but the Overseer of the facility on Mustafar was his Master's, and who could tell where an Inquisitor's loyalty might fall when the question was asked. In the way of the Sith, they would likely support whomever seemed the strongest. If the struggle were to become protracted, as he suspected it might, then there was the question of the Imperial Navy. Vader had commanded many Admirals, Captains, battle-groups and task-forces personally over the years, but he had no official position respective to them.

Ideally a single strike to kill his Master would be best, but Luke would not be ready for some time and Sidious had a way of discovering inconvenient truths. The war of Master and Apprentice might become a civil war, and in that case, he would need to be prepared. The ground-work would need to be laid.

Long term planning had never been his strong suit. That had always been Kenobi's role during the Clone Wars. Vader excelled in decisions of the moment, battlefield tactics. Grand strategy was not his game. Nor could his best efforts hope to combat Sidious' plans. Yet he had the advantage of knowledge - he was sure his Master did not expect treachery from him. Not that this was treachery - he was a Sith, and this was the rightful way of the Dark Side. But Sidious had noted his previous lack of ambition and was always quick to express his scorn over it. No, he would not suspect, not if Vader gave him no reason to.

Rousing himself from his thoughts long enough to check a chrono showed him that it would be less than two hours until they were due to leave hyperspace at Botajef to calculate their next jump. Sufficient time for a brief meditation. Perhaps the Force might deliver him some inspiration.

* * *

 **0 ABY - Alliance battlegroup over Vrogas Vas, Outer Rim**

The wreckage of the _Starfall_ was still jetting flames from time to time, as pockets of atmosphere were breached and vented to the cold unforgiving expanse of space. Leia watched a piece of charred hull tumble slowly planet-wards. The cruiser hadn't broken orbit fully before its destruction, and the next few days and hours would see what remained of it gradually streaking through the atmosphere and impacting on the planet below. The Imps had jettisoned their pods prior to the ship's complete destruction, and Captain Viss of the Mon Calamari light cruiser _Serene Justice_ would be remaining in the system to organise the necessary clean up operation. The rest of the battlegroup would be heading back to join the main fleet, and take what rest and repairs they could before their next assignments.

There had been very little loss of life on the Alliance's side. But neither had they managed to achieve their objective. Aside from the destruction of one ISB light cruiser, which didn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, they hadn't achieved anything at all. That grated, as any loss grated. Vader had escaped, and he had taken two hostages with him.

They _needed_ to get Luke and Han back! Leia resisted the urge to pace up and down on the bridge of the _Advocate_ \- the battle-group's Alderaanian flagship. She hadn't been able to get much out of that Nubian yacht of Vader's; its systems were heavily protected and although she had always been good at tinkering with mechanical devices, hacking wasn't really part of her skillset. The most she had been able to find out was the ship's designation and a little of its flight history. The yacht was the _Padmé Amidala_ , an old J-type 327 built a good thirty years ago or more. Leia had done some research once she had come aboard _Advocate_ ; this line of ships had been purpose built for the royal house of Naboo, presented to each new Queen on the day of her coronation and named after her as well. Some further digging had confirmed that Padmé Amidala had indeed been Queen of Naboo for a period of eight years, prior to becoming Senator for Chommell sector until her death just before the founding of the Empire.

Why did Vader have this ship? The question kept circling back into the forefront of her mind. The only connection she could see was the Emperor himself; Amidala seemed to have been a supporter of his in the Senate, although that was only natural considering their shared birth-planet. Had the ship been a gift from Palpatine? Had it been meant as mockery, to give something so elegant to that brute? Leia couldn't imagine the Emperor doing anything that didn't have more than one layer of meaning to it.

It didn't matter. The yacht hadn't given them any clues as to what Vader planned to do next, or to where he might be going. If Vader planned on taking Luke straight to Imperial Center there were too many possible hyperspace routes he could take for the Alliance to send a ship to cover every potential stop along the way. She didn't want to contemplate the fact that it simply might be too late, that there really was nothing that could be done, but there didn't seem to be much choice.

"Queen Organa," a voice said from behind her.

"That title isn't mine," she replied, turning from the viewpoint to look at Captain Rillan. It didn't feel comfortable, the way the survivors of her people looked at her. She didn't deserve reverence. She hadn't done anything to earn it.

"The throne of Alderaan might not exist anymore, but you are still our Queen," Rillan replied.

"What is it?" Leia was in no mood to argue about it. She felt an ache inside of her, vast and empty, and pushed it away quickly before it could sink its hungry teeth into her.

"A long-range comm for you, your majesty. The ident claims it's the _Millennium Falcon_."

Could her heart sink further? Apparently so. "Is there somewhere private I can take the call?"

Rillan nodded. "There's a briefing room off the bridge. Is there anyone you want there?"

"No. If I need someone, I'll make sure you know."

The background hum and chatter of the bridge disappeared the moment the door slid shut. Leia closed her eyes for a moment, steeling herself. She had faced Vader plenty of times now. She took refuge in her anger, let it chase away any hint of fear. She was stronger than what he had done to her.

The holo lit up, flickering. It was configured to show the whole of the _Falcon's_ cockpit, which right now meant Luke, Han… and Vader looming behind them like some kind of malevolent statue. "Greetings Princess Organa," Vader said.

"That's Commander Organa to you," Leia snapped. It she hadn't already been feeling testy about the matter, she might not have said that. She didn't _care_ what Vader called her.

"As you wish," Vader replied. "Commander." Somehow, the way he said it grated even more.

"What do you want?" Leia said, wanting this over with as quickly as possible.

"I am offering a fair and equitable exchange." In front of him, Han was rolling his eyes, although he kept his mouth shut. The idea that the Imperials had been able to put a leash on that smart talk of his was upsetting in a way she didn't want to analyse. At least he and Luke both looked unharmed - although looks could be deceiving.

"I'm listening," Leia said.

"Solo is your operative. His head is full of valuable information." Leia tensed. She remembered… remembered all too well… with the drugs clouding her mind, Vader's will had been like the sharp point of a drill against her skull, trying to burrow in, down to the deep and shadowed places where she kept her secrets, everything she knew. She had been able to resist - just. And she had been trained to resist interrogation. Her father hadn't _wanted_ her to become involved in the Alliance for years to come but he had been realistic, and she was thankful for it. But Han hadn't had any of that training. "Give me what I want, and that information shall remain where it is."

This was far too kriffing suspicious. "What do you want?" she asked.

"My ship," Vader said, in a voice as cold and malevolent as anything she'd heard from him.

"Worried your _Master_ won't be pleased you've lost his present?" It was a stab in the dark, but some part of it must have hit because it actually got a reaction - only a small one, one she wouldn't have noticed had she not been looking for it, but that was more than she had ever seen anyone get out of Vader. Internally, she smiled.

"Do you agree to the terms of this deal?" Vader asked, ignoring her question.

"I'm considering it," she replied. Whether it was as simple as avoiding the Emperor's anger or whether there was some other reason that it was so important that Vader retrieve this yacht didn't really matter. What mattered was the chance to get close to Vader again, to strike at him and make an attempt at retrieving his hostages. "I might be more willing if you'd sweeten the pot. I want Luke back as well."

"Skywalker is not a part of these negotiations."

Leia hadn't expected him to agree, but the vehemence behind Vader's words was surprising. She knew how cold and impersonal he could be from experience, and his reputation was only more of the same. Just as it wasn't in character to be willing to give up a Rebel for this ship, it wasn't like him to be quite so _fierce_ about one man, even if that person was the pilot who had destroyed the Death Star. Something about all of this felt off to her in a way she couldn't put into words.

"Han for your ship then," she said, letting the issue lie for now. "Where do you want this exchange to take place?"

"The Bandomeer system," Vader replied. "The third planet from the sun." Leia quickly reviewed her memories of galactic geography; Bandomeer was an Imperial mining world, which meant a standing guard of warships to protect the Empire's investment - although they would be orbiting Bandomeer itself, the second planet. It was also on the Hydian Way leading straight towards the Core, and the fastest way towards Imperial Center from here. A logical place for Vader to want to meet.

"You realise your ship's systems won't allow any unauthorised pilots to fly it," Leia said. "We would have to tractor it onto one of our carriers."

"You may bring one capital ship of your choosing," Vader said with a dismissive gesture. Clearly he had already counted that into his plans. Leia had no illusions; he would be trying to lure her into a trap just as much as she would him. Not that she expected to emerge from hyperspace right into the firing line of Bandomeer's fleet; they wouldn't be able to batter their shields down quickly enough to prevent escape, and she sincerely doubted Vader could get his hands on an Interdictor on such short notice. No, nothing would happen until _after_ the exchange had taken place.

"Very well," she said. "Make sure you are ready and waiting for our arrival."

Vader terminated the connection without another word. Leia spun round, stalking back out to the bridge.

"Captain Rillan," she called. "We have some things we need to discuss!"


	4. Chapter 4

**0 ABY -** _ **Ark Angel**_ **, exiting hyperspace above Vjun**

Ezra had spent most of their journey mediating, trying to regain his equilibrium. His throat still ached, and the skin was starting to purple up into dark bruises just above the collar of his uniform. If he coughed, sharp stabs of pain went up his neck, but he didn't think anything was permanently damaged. And really, he'd been lucky to get away with his life. A bit of discomfort didn't mean much, and he had been taught how to use his pain. It helped him focus on the Dark Side, to draw it to him and wrap it around him.

When he had first learned this on Mustafar it had been unpleasant after so much time using Jedi ways, but Ezra had quickly come to find it comforting. He felt strong, powerful, like this. He felt a little less alone.

The _Starfall_ was gone. Utterly destroyed by the Rebel Alliance. He hadn't been particularly close to any of the crew on board, and he and Captain Siln had only ever had a grudging respect for each other but… he was still going to miss them.

Aphra was busy elsewhere on the ship, and her droids had retreated to power-saving mode. Even the astromech was sulking somewhere. Ezra had this room to himself. It was a small cabin with a couple of bunks, bare walls, free of the clutter that took up most of the rest of the ship. It felt unlived in. Aphra clearly didn't often travel with passengers or even any more of a crew than the droids. The starkness reminded him a little of Mustafar, but he was managing not to care too much.

When they came out of hyperspace, Ezra felt it in the tremor of the ship around him. He rose from where he had been sitting cross-legged on one of the beds and made his way to the cockpit, betting he'd find Aphra there. He was right; she glared at him when he came in, but didn't say anything disparaging. Since Vader had spared his life she seemed to have accepted his presence, although she obviously didn't like it.

"Where are we?" Ezra asked, gazing out the viewscreen at the desolate planet ahead. It was a rocky brown-grey colour swirling with sickly-looking clouds. There were hints of oceans under there, but whether they were made up of water or something less pleasant he wouldn't like to guess.

"Vjun," Aphra replied. "That's where we're meant to be anyway." She frowned at the console in front of her. "I'm not picking up anything on the scanners. I don't think Lord Vader is here yet."

"Then I suppose we… just wait in orbit then?"

"I wonder why here?" Aphra said, mostly to herself. "It's not a hyperspace lane intersection, and we had to replot our jump at Botajef to get here. So there must be a reason…"

"I sense… something about that planet," Ezra said carefully, starting to recognise what had been prickling at his senses. "The Dark Side is strong here."

"Probably Sith training stuff then." Aphra shrugged.

"I suppose Lord Vader might want to lay some groundwork before taking him to Mustafar," Ezra said. It did make sense. There were no rules against favouritism amongst the Sith, and Mustafar's training facility didn't exactly go easy on its new recruits. Luke was strong enough in the Force that there couldn't be any reason to worry about him failing one of the tests, but someone should probably explain to him that he shouldn't be so trusting. The other trainees would take advantage of that.

They began to approach the planet, intending to take up orbit around it, when suddenly the comm chirped. They were being hailed; and apparently from the planet's surface.

"Who would want to set up shop on a grubby kriff-hole of a rock like this?" Aphra muttered, but answered the hail. Both she and Ezra couldn't hide their surprise when Imperial Navy codes flashed up on the holoscreen, quickly followed by the face of an Imperial officer. He nodded to each of them in turn.

"Welcome to Vjun," the man said. "Lord Vader sent word that you would be arriving. I am Major Damant, commander of the garrison at Bast Castle. If you remain on your current trajectory, I shall send an escort to guide you to an appropriate landing platform."

"Great!" Aphra said, with a false veneer of cheer. She could not hide her confusion from the Force. The Major gave them a salute and cut the connection.

This seemed a little too easy, especially given Ezra's recent run of bad luck. Yet wasn't he part of something greater than himself now? He was part of Lord Vader's plan, and the Dark Side itself would see to it that things started to turn their way. He wondered what kind of installation this 'Bast Castle' might be. It was rumoured that Lord Vader had some kind of Sith retreat on a distant planet somewhere, but he surely wouldn't have brought them _there,_ to such a private, even _sacred_ , place.

Would he?

* * *

 **0 ABY -** _ **Millennium Falcon,**_ **Bandomeer system, Meerian Sector, Outer Rim**

"Just what are you planning to do, father?" Luke asked. The _Falcon_ was currently parked in orbit over Fitee, the third planet in the Bandomeer system, idling on low power. From here Bandomeer was just a bright spot in the endless night of space and the three Star Destroyers surrounding it were utterly invisible to the naked eye. Yet it would only take a signal from Vader to bring them here in a very short time indeed.

"I do not intend to act dishonorably," his father replied. "However we are both aware of Commander Organa priorities."

Luke closed his eyes, trying not to let his frustration show even though that was a futile prospect. Vader had already mentioned his lack of shields and his projection of his emotions, even though Luke didn't fully understand what he meant by it. " _Why_ is this ship so important to you?" he asked. "It's nothing to do with the Emperor, is it?" His father had reacted with anger when Leia made that suggestion, but there was a lot more to this, he could feel it.

"No," Vader said. "It was your mother's ship."

"My mother?" Some indescribable, undefinable emotion stabbed through him. A part of him had suspected it had to be something like that. The yacht looked too much like the one he had seen in his vision. "I… I don't know anything about her," he said quietly. "What was she like?"

His father hesitated. It was something Luke was coming to recognise whenever he had broached a difficult topic. And what could be more difficult that this? He had to believe his father had loved her - she had spoken his name too fondly in the vision to think anything else. She had worried for him, for his safety. And… Obi-Wan had said nothing. What _had_ happened on Mustafar?

"She had a kind heart," Vader said after a while. "She was stubborn, passionate, clever… and she was beautiful." The vocoder did not allow much emotion to leach through into his voice, but through whatever tenuous connection was allowing Luke to detect his moods he could feel his father's pain and sorrow. He could feel the echoes of love, faint and despairing. "Kenobi should not have kept her memory from you."

Luke hadn't asked… _why_ hadn't he asked when he'd had the chance? He'd assumed at the time that Old Ben's friendship had only been with his father, that he hadn't necessarily known his mother, because surely otherwise Ben would have mentioned something… Perhaps it had been too painful for him. There had been quiet agony behind his eyes on Mustafar.

"I don't even know her name," he admitted.

His father's anger rippled in the Force. "Padmé," he said. "Her name was Padmé Naberrie. She took the throne-name Padmé Amidala when she was elected Queen of Naboo."

"My mother was a queen?" Luke asked in surprise. He hadn't expected anything like _that_. Well, he hadn't really known _what_ to expect. He'd thought about it when he was younger, conjured up all kinds of ideas, but even his fantasies hadn't aimed as high as that.

"And later a senator," Vader said. Was that pride Luke sensed? "She championed many worthy causes, and made many enemies doing so. It did not deter her. Indeed that was how we met for the second time, when I was assigned to protect her."

"Was that the sort of thing the Jedi did in the Republic?" Luke asked. He wasn't expecting an unbiased answer by any means, but so far his father hadn't lied to him, not outright. He was sure he would have sensed an outright lie, although he had to admit that he was less sure he would be able to detect manipulation of the truth. But Vader seemed to want to be honest with him.

"Infrequently," Vader replied. Luke waited. Nothing else appeared to be forthcoming.

"We heard a lot of legends about the Jedi on Tatooine," Luke said cautiously. "But that's all they ever were. Legends. I don't think a single person alive on the planet had ever met a Jedi - that they knew of anyway, since Ben was in hiding. Except my Aunt and Uncle I suppose, not that they ever mentioned it." He was hoping to suggest that whatever his father might want to tell him about the Jedi would have to be accepted as the truth, that there was nothing Luke knew to contradict even the worst Imperial propaganda - but by the faint trace of amusement, Vader was well aware that Luke was making a clumsy attempt at manipulation.

"The Outer Rim territories rightly never had great respect for the Jedi," his father said. "Their legends may not be factual, but in spirit they are closer to the truth than the lies of the Old Republic."

"They were meant to be guardians of peace and order." Ben had mentioned something to that effect.

"Whose peace and order?" his father said coldly. "That of a corrupt Senate? A Republic sliding closer to chaos each year? Or their own whims? By the end of the war they certainly had delusions of setting up their own state."

Luke shook his head. This was starting to get into territory he wasn't sure he was ready to deal with. He didn't know the first thing about politics, so how could he tell what sounded right here? "Where was my mother in all of this?" he asked. "You said she was a senator, right?"

"She was nothing like the rest," Vader said. "She had _principles_. The Empire… it was meant to be for _her_."

Luke's blood ran cold. He didn't know why - he didn't know what his mother might have felt about the Empire, but some instinct, or perhaps the whisper of the Force, told him she wouldn't have wanted _this_. Not the killing, the purges, the subjugation… "What happened?" he asked quietly.

His father fell silent again. "By that time it was already too late," he said eventually. "Kenobi had lied to her about me, about the Emperor, about what we had done to ensure the safety of the new Empire. In time I would have showed her that it was for the best, but...I do not know how she died. For a long time I thought she perished on Mustafar."

"Mustafar…" The vision. That had to be it! That was what they had seen! Should he press, should he ask more about what had happened there? But there was a tense, fragile quality to the silence that had fallen between them that said no. It wouldn't be wise, not right now. There would be plenty of time for him to ask more in the future. "Will you tell me more about her?" he asked instead.

"I shall," Vader replied. "Later. For the moment, we must deal with Commander Organa."

Luke opened his mouth to ask another question but then he felt it too; the ripple in the Force. Further out from the planet, a ship dropped out of hyperspace. It was an Alderaanian cruiser, and he barely had to reach out to sense that Leia was on board. He smiled. There was something about her being here that was comforting, even if this was far from the best of circumstances.

"I'll get Han," he said.

Vader nodded. "We shall see what trap the Commander has in store for us," he replied.

* * *

 **0 ABY - Alderaanian cruiser** _ **Advocate,**_ **Bandomeer system, Meerian Sector, Outer Rim**

"Have the technicians finished with that yacht?" Leia asked, scanning the view of this system's third planet from the bridge. They had only just dropped out of hyperspace; not enough time to scan for the _Falcon_ yet, but she had a firm feeling that it wasn't far away. There, wasn't that a flash of grey against the blackness of space? Her eyes fixed on it until she was certain. Yes. It was here. Han was here. So was Luke… and Vader.

"Yes, your majesty," Captain Rillan replied. "He won't get far in _that_ ship."

"Good." Leia smiled. She had all of this planned out. "Have we got sensor lock on the _Falcon_?"

"Affirmative," one of the technicians replied.

"Hail Vader. Tell him we're ready to make the exchange."

The reply came quickly. Not that Leia was entirely focusing on it; she was keeping an eye on the terminal reporting the results of their long-range scans. It seemed that at the moment all three of Bandomeer's Star Destroyers were where they ought to be; in orbit around the mining planet. Not that it meant much.

"We _are_ jamming all transmissions out of this area, aren't we?" she asked, and was given a swift confirmation. Good. No calls for help from Vader. "Start tractoring the yacht out of our hanger then."

The _Falcon_ skimmed through space towards them. At the speeds the Corellian freighter was capable of it wouldn't be easy to get a targeting lock on them, not from a cruiser. The thought wasn't one she was really considering anyway. It was one thing to claim that she, Han and Luke would all gladly give their lives to see Vader ended when she was there in the thick of it with them. It was another thing entirely to fire on them from a capital ship.

The Nubian yacht glided away from the _Advocate_ slowly. The _Falcon_ slowed and came to meet it as the tractor beam disengaged, turning to present its dorsal surface and the airlock there. The two vessels docked with apparent ease, although Leia knew very well how difficult such a maneuver was when only one of the ships had a pilot at the helm. Which one of them was it, she wondered? Luke, Han or Vader? Not that it mattered. Good piloting wouldn't save that monster.

Waiting was getting on her nerves. Leia resisted the urge to pace. She was calculating timing in her head. How long to climb the ladder from the _Falcon_ to the _Amidala_ , navigating the tricky gravity orientation change? How long to check the systems, find nothing _apparently_ wrong, and disengage? What if Luke decided to do something typical of him and choose this moment to try to escape Vader?

Then, finally, the airlocks separated with the slight puff of venting residual atmosphere.

"Check in with Captain Solo and ready the tractor beam again," she ordered.

"Solo confirms he's alive, and alone on the _Falcon_ ," came the rapid reply. "Both his sub-lights and hyperdrive appear to have been left in working order, according to his diagnostics."

That should have made her suspicious. If Vader had enacted his own sabotage, they would have had to use the _Advocate's_ tractor beam to pull the _Falcon_ on board to leave the system, but he hadn't Later, she realised that this was Vader's attempt at honour - Han was no longer part of this fight. But in the moment the thought did not occur to her. "Lock on to the yacht then," she said. "Let's hope this works when he tries to run."

* * *

 **0 ABY - J-327 Nubian yacht** _ **Padmé Amidala,**_ **Bandomeer system, Meerian Sector, Outer Rim**

"I have a bad feeling about this," Luke said, as he followed his father into the yacht. It was just as bright inside as out, clean and elegant in a way that made Vader look a little out of place. But as soon as those heavy durasteel boots hit the deck a kind of tension went out of the Force. _Home_ , Luke thought, and then wondered if that had really been _him_ thinking it at all.

"Commander Organa will certainly have laid a trap for me," his father told him, striding through the ship. Luke had to jog to keep up. "The cockpit is here. I will rely on your evasive maneuvers until I have made the repairs."

"What's broken?" Luke asked.

" _That_ I have yet to discover."

That didn't make Luke feel any better. He settled into the pilot's chair, running his hands over the unfamiliar controls. The soft, red synth-leather of his seat had a comfortable, well-worn quality that spoke of many years of use. The bulk of the Alderaanian cruiser loomed outside, closer than was comfortable considering the situation. He began activating the ship's systems, running a quick diagnostic as he did so.

"Authorisation needed," the ship told him, a code input box blinking on the screen.

"Damn it," Luke said to himself. "Now what?"

"Voice-print recognised. Access granted."

"Ummm." Luke wasn't sure he wanted to know how his father had gotten his hands on his voiceprint. He probably wouldn't like the answer to that particular question. Better to just ignore it. The diagnostic at least seemed to indicate that everything was in working order - which was suspicious in and of itself.

He was just wondering what to do next when the ship's internal comms crackled. "Disengage the airlock," his father told him. "Organa will become suspicious if we delay any further."

"Okay," Luke replied, starting the process. "Have you found out what the problem is?"

"I will be having _words_ with these Rebel engineers." Even with half the ship between them, Vader's anger still felt just as strong as when he was standing right beside him. That wasn't a good sign, and neither was the growl in his voice. "Even given their aims this is a slovenly job."

"Can you fix it?"

"Yes. They have removed several limiters on the sub-light engines; you will have to monitor their fluctuations individually from there whilst I focus on the hyperdrive motivator."

"Okay… okay, I can do this." It was either that or find out exactly how big an explosion a couple of modified Headon-5 engines were capable of making.

"They will be attempting to get a tractor lock on us," his father reminded him. "I suggest you do not let them."

" _E chu ta,"_ Luke swore under his breath, and grabbed the controls. The yacht accelerated far faster than he expected, jetting away from the _Falcon_. He compensated quickly, mindful of the slight tremors that were starting to run through the ship, and sent them in a tight, controlled spin that would bring them round and in close to the cruiser. When tangling with a capital ship, closer was always better. The point defence batteries started up, red bolts streaking around their path, but the Alliance ship wasn't trying too hard. Probably they were hoping the sabotaged engines would do their job for them.

"Slow, and bring us around directly behind their bridge," Vader ordered over the comms.

Luke wanted to ask why, but his father sounded distracted. He'd never actually worked on a hyperdrive himself - in fact he'd never even _seen_ one before leaving Tatooine - but he was well aware just how complicated they were. Fixing one couldn't be easy, and it couldn't be much longer before the Alliance tired of this and sent out fighters. If the yacht had been in its normal condition Luke wouldn't have worried, but he seriously doubted he could dodge X-wings without pushing the engines just that little bit too hard. He curved another loop around the cruiser and did as he'd been told. As he slowed to hover over the rear surface of the bridge-tower he realised the logic; none of the ship's guns were set up to be able to reach them here.

Suddenly the yacht shuddered. Luke yelped and scanned the engine readouts, worried that something had just gone horribly wrong. But everything looked fine.

"I have deployed the magnetic clamp," his father told him, in a way that sounded almost reassuring.

"You're… going to pull us onto the cruiser's hull?" Luke asked, confused. "Why?"

"I intend to layer our shields in such a way as to interlock with those of the capital ship," Vader replied.

"What?" If anything, that only made him more confused. "Can you even do something like that? Surely the difference in the energy fields… the interactions would…"

"It is perfectly safe if done correctly."

"I don't think this plan sounds like a very good idea," Luke said hesitantly.

"Young one, trust me."

'Young one' Luke mouthed to himself. He felt like he should be insulted, but this _was_ his father speaking. If anyone was allowed to call him something like that… still! He was almost twenty!

"It will give us the time we need to complete the repairs," Vader said.

Luke watched uncomfortably as the rough grey hull of the Alderaanian ship moved closer through the viewscreen. This seemed dangerous, but he _did_ trust that his father knew what he was doing. He could sense nothing but calm confidence from him - and anger, but that was always present. He sank back in the chair, resigned to waiting. He suppose he could have volunteered to help with the hyperdrive, but he had a feeling that he would only have been in the way. Vader seemed to have everything well in hand.

* * *

 **0 ABY - Alderaanian cruiser** _ **Advocate**_ **, Bandomeer system, Meerian Sector, Outer Rim**

"What is Vader _doing_?" Leia shouted to the bridge at large as the Nubian yacht leapt away from the _Falcon_. "He's going to do the job of killing himself for us!"

"There's no way he could have rewired the engines to compensate for removing the limiters," Captain Rillan said. "Even the best pilot in the galaxy couldn't keep the sub-lights in check long enough to get away from us. _Something_ will blow before too long."

"He's not trying to flee," Leia growled, following the ship's erratic course as it slid towards them at some eccentric angle. "Are the weapons hot on that thing?"

Rillan shook his head. "Absolutely not."

"Then why is he coming to us?"

"Do you want us to fire?" the Lieutenant at weapons control asked.

"Yes, but aim to disable," Leia replied. "That was the whole point of this; to take him alive and recover his hostage! If he wasn't so arrogant as to think he can survive _flying_ that death-trap we've made…"

"We've lost the targeting solution!" the Lieutenant - Mithan, wasn't it? - said, half-rising from her seat in her alarm. "He's… found a blind spot for our guns."

"Where?" Leia demanded, coming over to look at the terminals herself. The _Advocate's_ external blueprints spread out in front of her, blinking with a hundred informative updates of ship systems which were of less concern to her right now that Vader's _exact_ location.

"To the rear of the bridge tower." Lieutenant Mithan pointed. "And…" she blinked. "There's some _really_ strange readings coming from our shields there."

Leia felt a horrible suspicion rise up in the back of her mind. "Get a security team as close as they can to that point of the hull," she said. No time to launch fighters; by the time they were in position their target would no longer be anywhere they could reach.

"You can't possibly be suggesting…" Captain Rillan said, turning ashen.

"That kriffing suit of his doesn't care if he's in atmosphere or vacuum - it'll protect him all the same," Leia said, nodding. "And if there's one thing that can cut through meters of durasteel plating, it's a lightsaber. So yes, Captain, I _am_ saying exactly that. He's going to board us."

* * *

 **0 ABY - J-327 Nubian yacht** _ **Padmé Amidala,**_ **Bandomeer system, Meerian Sector, Outer Rim**

There was no sign of any fighters. Luke knew the cruiser had to have some, so where were they? Even if they couldn't risk firing on them when they were so closer to the Alliance ship's hull, he would have thought they would at least send out a couple of X-wings to try and catch them when they tried to run. They couldn't stay here forever, after all! He'd never have thought he would say something like this under the circumstances, but he was _bored_.

Sighing, he activated the internal comms. "Father, how are the repairs to the hyperdrive going?" he asked, trying not to sound too impatient. He knew he should just wait, that the job wasn't exactly a simple one…

There wasn't any reply. Luke frowned. He tried pushing the comm button again, thinking perhaps it was just the unfamiliar systems, but no, he could hear the faint buzz of the open connection and the hum of machinery from the engine bay. So… why wasn't Vader answering? Surely there wasn't anything that could have gone wrong in such a short space of time? Was he just one of these people that got so wrapped up in fixing a problem that they barely paid any attention to the rest of the world around them? Maybe that was it. And he didn't feel anything unusual through the Force.

In fact, he wasn't feeling much of anything of his father through the Force. That was more worrying. This strange connection they had… he had been able to feel _something_ from Vader ever since leaving Vrogas Vas, so why would that change?

This wasn't right. Luke left the cockpit, sure now that he had to investigate. It wasn't as though he had been doing anything critical up there anyway.

The ship was quiet and still. Luke trotted down the stairs to the lower deck and by dint of some exploring found the room where the hyperspace engine was housed. At the moment it had been elevated up out of its housing underneath the flooring and showed signs of recent repair. However, everything seemed to be finished. To Luke's admittedly inexperienced eye, it looked functional. Recently soldered wiring and circuitry was in place, and all that seemed left was to let it slot back down into proper position. So… where was his father?

Luke reached out for their connection. It had been continuing to grow stronger, and now he could envision it as a physical link between his mind and Vader's. There was nothing wrong with his end, but it felt as though a wall had been built up at the other side - or perhaps a set of blast doors lowered. He couldn't get any sense of what his father was feeling or doing right now. Luke resisted the urge to curse in frustration.

It shouldn't be _hard_ to find his father in the Force, surely! His presence was so strong! Even without this particular connection, if he just stretched his senses out… even if he wasn't very good at it he should be able to feel something…

Luke knelt down on the hard metal floor and tried to concentrate. He knew what the Force felt like, he knew what it was like to touch it, he had done it without thinking about it before… It came almost easily this time. The Alderaanian ship was beneath him, all the lives on it like the lights of stars in the distance. And there was Leia - he didn't know how he knew it was her, but he would have recognised her anywhere. And… his father. Cold fire, a dark sun burning, deadly and burning with rage.

On board the Alliance cruiser.

No! What had he done?! How had he even managed to get in there? There was an airlock on the yacht but Luke hadn't seen any vacuum suits. Except... that Vader wouldn't need one. And his lightsaber would be able to cut a way inside.

 _I can't stop him_ , Luke thought. _I can't go after him through_ vacuum _. He's going to kill them all and there's nothing I can do about it._

 _Father, you promised you wouldn't do anything to hurt me. Please, don't do this._

Luke's thoughts churned inside his skull. He fought to think of a solution. Maybe he couldn't board the cruiser the same way Vader had, but there had to be another way! If he could find the control to disengage the magnetic clamp, he could skim close enough to the cruiser's hull to make it to their hangar bay. Once inside, he had Alliance passwords that would prove who he was. He didn't have much time, but he had to try! Lives were depending on it.

He had to stop his father from doing this.

* * *

 **0 ABY - Alderaanian cruiser** _ **Advocate**_ **, Bandomeer system, Meerian Sector, Outer Rim**

Leia watched the destruction from the bridge cameras. The moment they had identified the hull segment where Vader was cutting through, the blast-doors had been lowered around that area. That hadn't held him for long. After the first time he'd carved a hole through into the next part of a corridor - with the natural result of depressurising it - she had ordered them to let him through the next one and close it behind him, purely so that her soldiers would have an atmosphere to breath when they tried to fight him. She hadn't been expecting their success, not against that monster, not in confined spaces which favoured him, but even one lucky hit…

There had been no such luck. Vader was a one man army, seemingly untouchable, projecting an aura of terror wherever he went. He was coming straight for the bridge, and it wouldn't be long before he made it here.

"Pull them back," Leia ordered, as the camera caught a good view of another Rebel sliced in half by that deadly red blade. "This is pointless. We'll have to make our stand here."

"Yes your majesty," Rillan replied, kind enough not to point out that they were no more likely to be successful. She had expected some trap from Vader, but nothing so bold as this! Piloting a ship made deadly to the slightest wrong move just so he could mount a one man boarding action where it would be the hardest to stop him and with the most for him to gain… She had underestimated him. She should have known better.

Leia drew the lightsaber from her jacket. At least they had this. It might not be enough, but it would at least slow him down. Fighting him herself might buy the bridge crew the opportunity to shoot him in the back; surely he couldn't defend from blasters _and_ a lightsaber at once!

Vader stalked onwards through the now-deserted corridors. For a moment, she thought she saw him stop, hesitate, but whatever had caused that soon passed. He continued on until he stood in front of the triple-thickness blast doors that guarded the bridge. Without hesitation, his blade plunged into the metal, hilt deep. From her own side of the doors Leia could see the cherry-red glow start to appear, small at first but rapidly growing in size and brightness. Molten durasteel started to run down the inner surface of the doors, gradually revealing the spitting red tip of the lightsaber.

Cutting through was not a quick procedure. Leia watched the slow arc form and wondered if it almost might be better to let him through. At least _that_ would get it over with. She could practically taste the fear in the air, and the wait was only making things worse. This felt like being trapped like lopers in a burrow with a hungry garral outside.

"Hold steady," she said out loud. "Be patient everyone. Make sure our systems are shut down - we have to limit what damage he can do from here." If she couldn't save the bridge crew, at least she might be able to save everyone else.

A man-sized semicircle of durasteel pushed forwards with a shriek of metal on metal. It slid to one side to reveal Vader, his hand still held out before him. The monster took his time, ducking under the still-glowing rim of the opening he had created and stalking forward, his lightsaber held before him. Leia ignited her own, feeling the warmth of the green plasma against her face.

"Organa," Vader snarled. He no longer sounded cold, emotionless. He was more than angry; he was _furious_. "You will _pay_ for your actions."

"If you've come to kill me you can certainly _try_ ," Leia replied. She had anger of her own, and plenty of it. It didn't matter to her why Vader had taken up some kind of personal vendetta against her, although given that this seemed to have arisen in the short time since Vrogas Vas it had to have something to do with the _Amidala_. She had faced death at the Empire's hands before, and she would not give in to it quietly. She would fight back.

Vader said nothing more. He strode towards her, heedless of the bridge officers opening fire on him. Blaster bolts were batted aside in a flurry of red and then he was on her. The crimson lightsaber swept down and Leia blocked instinctively. The blades crackled together for a moment before Vader attacked again. There was no longer any time for Leia to pay attention to anything else going on in the room; it was as much as she could do to stay alive. She wasn't thinking about what she was doing, she was just reacting, and although it was working better than she had hoped she wouldn't stay lucky for long.

Then suddenly all she felt was pain. Her right wrist exploded into fire and she stumbled backwards, unable to keep herself from crying out. Her hand… her hand was gone. Leia looked down at the cauterised stump in horror. Vader paused only long enough to deflect a few further shots from the crew and then raised the red blade for the killing blow.

Another lightsaber hummed into existence between them. Leia looked up to see just about the last possible person she had expected. Luke Skywalker. How had he even gotten here? He stood between them - Leia could only see his back but determination was written in every line of his body.

"Stand aside," Vader said.

"No," Luke replied. He wasn't attacking… but neither was Vader. Even the blaster shots died away as the whole room watched the confrontation playing out in front of them. Leia did her best to focus past the pain. She had felt worse than this. Vader had done worse than this to her.

"You were meant to remain on the ship, young one," Vader said.

"Did you really think I wasn't going to notice!" Luke shouted. "Leia is my _friend_. Everyone on board this cruiser… why are you doing this? It's me you wanted - we could have just left here!"

 _Because this is war,_ Leia wanted to answer him. Luke knew that as well as everyone else, why was he choosing now to be naive?

"You are well aware what your _friend_ has done to Padmé's ship," Vader growled. The way he said it made it sound… personal, Leia realised. This wasn't fear of his Master's punishment for losing the vessel. This was something else. But… what? Why would a Nubian royal yacht matter so much to a monster like Vader?

"So you were going to kill her for it!" Luke said. "No. I won't let you."

"That is not up to you. Return to the ship."

"No," Luke said. And then, quietly enough that Leia must have been the only person close enough to hear it. "Father… you made me a promise. I'm going to keep you to it.."

What? _Father?_ Leia went cold. For some reason she didn't doubt in the slightest that this was the truth - she was certain that Vader really was Luke's father. But how was that possible? How could someone as good as Luke possibly have that brute in his family?

Vader's helmet turned from his son's face towards hers. He knew she had heard that, she realised. She could almost feel his rage shimmering through the air between them. Leia grit her teeth and struggled to her feet, leaning heavily on a control panel for support. Pain stabbed up and down her arm.

"A quick death is more than you deserve Organa," he finally said. "This is not over."

Vader's lightsaber deactivated with a hiss, and she watched Luke relax. He too put his blade away. Then with one swift, unexpected motion Vader grabbed Luke by the waist and bodily heaved him over his shoulder. Luke yelped. "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

"Securing my hostage," Vader announced, clearly making sure that his words carried to the bridge at large, and stalked away.

Leia leaned back against the controls and did her best not to fall over. The ship and everyone on board were safe now but… what she had learned was disturbing. Luke's father was Anakin Skywalker, which meant Vader… She was going to have to discuss this with Mon Mothma. She had been a senator in the old Republic. She had known the Jedi Knights of the Clone Wars. Perhaps she would know what to do about this.

* * *

 **0 ABY - J-327 Nubian yacht** _ **Padmé Amidala**_ **, Bandomeer to Vjun**

Vader's mind was filled with the burning rage of justice delayed. Organa yet lived, despite that she had _dared_ to harm Padmé's ship, had _desecrated_ her memory by doing so. His anger, and the cloak of the Dark Side it drew to it, were so thick around him that every rasp of his respirator seemed to draw it in and out of his lungs. He tasted the ash of Mustafar's choking air on his tongue.

The moment he boarded the yacht with Luke still wriggling over his shoulder he put the boy down and headed for the cockpit, locking the door behind him. He didn't trust himself around his son at the moment. The boy's actions weren't his fault - he had never known Padmé, he couldn't truly appreciate the insult that Organa had given her, he could only think of his friend first. But only half of him could appreciate that; the other half wanted to lash out and barely cared what target it might hit. He was _not_ going to allow that part control.

He left the cruiser's hangar at high speed - perhaps faster than was wise. The engines strained and vibrated with a high whine, but he calmed them a little with the Force. It gave him something to do, something to concentrate on that wasn't pure rage. He plotted their jump into the nav computer and sent them smoothly into hyperspace, feeling the Force-presence of the lifeforms on the Rebel ship disappear behind them. The time would come, he promised himself, that he would have his revenge on Leia Organa. Perhaps when his son had finally embraced the power of the Dark Side, when Vader had told him more about his mother, perhaps then he would understand the necessity of doing so.

Besides, one thing he had learned in the last two decades was patience.

* * *

 **0 ABY - Bast Castle, Vjun, Nuiri sector, Outer Rim**

As the Major had promised, a trio of TIE-fighters met Aphra's ship just above atmosphere, dropping into place behind them. The leader pinged their comm channel and Aphra answered it, her eyes remaining trained on the targeting computers. Ezra couldn't blame her for being cautious. These were Lord Vader's men but… the instincts of mistrust had been well trained into him. You couldn't count on another Inquisitor to have your back if they sensed weakness, let alone a member of one of the other Imperial military services.

"You'll want to keep your shields up until we reach Bast Castle," the squadron leader said. "The rain here is… well, you'll see. Transmitting flight path to you now."

"Why would I put my shields _down?_ " Aphra asked rhetorically, although the channel wasn't active when she said it, Ezra noticed. She pulled up the information that had been sent over and looked through it, then adjusted their course planetward.

The TIE escort continued to shadow the _Ark Angel_ as it soared down through thick, poisonous-looking cloud cover and into a storm. Fat droplets splattered on the shields over the viewscreen and evaporated with hisses of energy. Lightning flashed nearby. Ezra might not have been the one at the controls, but he could feel the way the winds were buffeting their craft. How did the TIE's even fly in this?

After a short while a dark spire loomed ahead of them, too thin to be a mountain, but impressive in its height. Buildings nestled at the foot, and windows glowed like so many tiny lights. In the darkness of the cloud cover it would have been easy to miss this place for all its size, save for when lightning lit it up briefly and brilliantly. Ezra began to realise that he'd been wrong. This _was_ Lord Vader's Sith retreat. And they had been told to come here, specifically. Equal amounts of excitement and terror thrilled through him.

The fighters directed them to land in a hangar bay at ground level of the complex. It wasn't the only one; there were a number of massive durasteel doors set all along the outer wall of the building. Ezra wondered why bother when there didn't seem to be any other people out here. Magnetic fields would have done the job of keeping out the rain just as well. So what threat were the doors protecting from?

Once the _Ark Angel_ had landed inside the docking bay, Ezra followed Aphra out to where they were met by a squad of stormtroopers, plus Major Damant. The stormtroopers were… not standard. The armour didn't look quite right, as though the design was subtly different, and there were blue markings everywhere. Ezra had been taught all of the details of the Imperial military as part of Inquisitorius training, including marks of rank and specialisation. These weren't in any of the files he had seen. And yet they did seem somehow familiar… He supposed they were specific to Lord Vader. Vader's Fist, the fabled 501st Legion, were all the best of the best. Vader's personal guard could only be of superlative quality.

"Greetings, Twelfth Brother, Doctor Aphra," Major Damant said, nodding to them both cordially. "Rooms have been assigned for your use. I have been instructed to take you to them until Lord Vader returns. The droids also."

"I'm sure they'd be happy to stay with the ship," Aphra said. "This is a hell of a facility you've got here, but Triple-Zero tends to get irritable with nothing to do."

"Our instructions were clear."

Aphra shrugged. "I'll fetch them," she said, and disappeared back up the ramp.

Ezra waited for her uncomfortably. The Major wasn't staring at him, but it certainly felt like he was. Or perhaps it was the troopers. Someone had an eye for aesthetics - this squad were all exactly the same height. If it weren't for the small variations in their armour markings he would never have been able to tell one from the other. Not that it was ever easy, but Ezra had been taught to manage it, and the Force helped. But even their Force signatures were strangely uniform.

Aphra reappeared with her two droids and Luke's astromech behind her. "I think we're ready for the grand tour," she said, grinning.

"Not that one," Major Damant said, pointing. Artoo gave a little warble of surprise.

"You're in charge," Aphra said. "Although I hope you're gonna be careful with it; I don't think its master would be pleased if he doesn't find it in the same condition he left it."

Major Damant didn't answer. He motioned to a pair of the troopers, who approached Artoo. The droid squawked and extended its shock probe in a threatening way. The Major sighed. "Droid - unit R2-D2. Recall the Socorro campaign?"

Whatever kind of code that was, it pacified Artoo. He put away the probe and followed the two stormtroopers with happy beeps. Ezra wondered at the significance of this, but it was hardly important right now. He would have the chance to ask Luke when he and Lord Vader arrived.

"Now that's over, shall we proceed?" Major Damant said.

He and Aphra followed the Major, Beetee and Triple-Zero following on behind. Even though they were only passing through unremarkable corridors, Ezra still found it hard to contain his excitement. Bast Castle was built entirely out of black stone, black duracrete, black plasteel, with the occasional highlight of dull chrome. There were shadows everywhere, shadows that almost felt alive. Occasionally he saw more stormtroopers, a glaring contrast in their white armour even despite those blue markings. The Dark Side pressed in all around him.

Aphra noticed, of course. She might have had some cutting words to say - he could still feel her dislike for him - if it wasn't for her own evident curiosity. "What's gotten into you?" she finally asked.

Ezra tried to think of how to explain it. "This place is… it's sacred," he said. "There have always been rumours in the Inquisitorius about Lord Vader's Sith retreat and I never thought I would actually get to _be_ here! I didn't think anyone but those highest up in the Imperial hierarchy even knew where it was!"

Aphra didn't say much in return, although she hummed thoughtfully, but her pleasure was obvious. But not for the same reasons. The ways of the Force meant little to her. She didn't respect Darth Vader because he was a Sith, she respected him because he was _powerful_. If Vjun was important to him, then it was important to her.

Just walking through the halls of the castle was an experience in itself. Everything here was steeped in the power of the Dark Side. It was like being back on Mustafar, but without all the bad memories. Not that he ought to be shying away from those memories, Ezra admitted to himself. The training was harsh for a reason, after all. If he couldn't use the pain to his own advantage, what kind of Inquisitor was he? Still, here the underlying atmosphere seemed more... melancholy somehow, rather than the constant current of vicious rage that it was easy to fall prey to on Mustafar.

When they finally arrived at their quarters, which were more luxurious than they really deserved, Ezra took advantage of the showers - real hot water! - to wash away some of the sweat and dirt of Vrogas Vas. He therefore missed some kind of drama with Triple-Zero and one of the stormtroopers. The first he knew of it was when he stepped out of the fresher and saw Aphra arguing with an angry trooper while two others dragged one of their comrades away, hanging limply between them. After a moment the trooper with the arrow painted on his helmet whirled away and strode out of the room.

"Idiots," Aphra said, to the room at large. "I told them to stay out of our way."

"I don't even want to know," Ezra replied, sitting down on one of the couches and trying to untangle his wet hair with his fingers. He hadn't been able to find a comb.

"I've sent BeeTee and Triple-Zero into that bedroom," Aphra said, pointing. "Don't go inside - or maybe do! I could do with a good laugh."

"I'm sure Lord Vader will arrive soon," Ezra said, thinking that might be the source of her apparent agitation.

"I hope we don't have to stay here too long," Aphra replied, glaring around the perfectly innocent room. "This isn't my scene. I don't _hang around_ with the Empire - that hasn't historically ended very well for me." Ezra wasn't buying it - moments ago she had been just as excited to be here as he was. Maybe it was just the presence of the troops that was putting her on edge.

"Maybe Lord Vader will have something else for you to do while he trains his son," Ezra suggested.

"Man, did I misjudge that kid," Aphra said, shaking her head. "Vader Junior… Those Jedi have a lot to answer for."

"Yes," Ezra said, letting the rage flash through him. "But everything will be put right now."

"You've changed your tune all of a sudden," Aphra sneered. "What happened to 'kriff Lord Vader's orders, I do what I like'?"

"I was doing as the Force guided me!" Ezra replied, meeting her anger with his own. "I was _helping_ Luke!"

"And now?"

"If you're asking me whose side I'm on, it doesn't matter! There are no sides here."

"You think after two decades of Jedi indoctrination this kid is just going to accept the truth?" Aphra asked. "That he's going to become a good little Sith? We're all going to have to pull together here to get Luke to see the light and help Lord Vader's plans along."

"He doesn't need _our_ help," Ezra said. "He's a Lord of the Sith!"

Aphra frowned. "The mark of a good leader is knowing how to use the skills of those around you," she said. "And I think you'd be the first to be thankful that Lord Vader knows that, since it's the only reason you're still alive. If you weren't useful to him in some way I doubt Luke's words would have saved you."

Somehow Ezra felt that wasn't true, and that Aphra was well aware of that fact. But she was so loyal to Vader that it practically burned in the Force, and in her eyes he was nothing but a traitor. She would say a lot of dubious things if they would hurt him. And lying was familiar to her; she _was_ a smuggler after all.

"My goal here is to see Luke become a Sith," he said. "To see him at his father's side where he belongs. I'll do what I can to make that happen."

"Then we're on the same side," Aphra said, with a smile that was more of a threat. "So long as you remember you work for Lord Vader, _not_ his Jedi-raised son."

Ezra wasn't about to forget it. Second chances didn't come around more than once.

* * *

 **0 ABY - Alderaanian cruiser** _ **Advocate**_ **, Bandomeer system, Meerian Sector, Outer Rim**

Leia had wanted to contact Mon immediately, but Captain Rillan had talked enough sense into her to receive proper medical attention first. She had to admit to herself that she probably wasn't thinking clearly at the moment. Her brain was flooded with stress chemicals and endorphins and frankly, her head was spinning. Rillan escorted her personally down to the med bay, possibly to make sure she didn't get distracted en route, then left her in the care of the senior medic and her droids.

The first thing they did was to give her an injection of painkillers. It wasn't until she felt her muscles relax and her jaw unclench that she realised how bad it had been. Her head felt a very little bit clearer, but the world still felt as though it was happening at a remove, as though her body existed several feet away from her. Her severed hand and the lightsaber it was still clutching had been retrieved from the floor of the bridge, but a cursory examination had Doctor Os Kel tutting to herself and looking unhappy.

"There's too much damage to the tissues to reattach it," the Mon Cal told Leia. "In the interests of honesty, I've never seen a lightsaber wound before, although I've read about them. The blade's heat causes internal burns to a significant radius around the obvious injury - even with bacta this will result in heavy scarring within most of your forearm. Our only option is to amputate up to healthy tissue and have a cybernetic replacement made."

The idea was unpleasant, but Leia wasn't about to ignore reality. If Os Kel said this was the only way, then she trusted her medical opinion. "How long will it take to have it built?" she asked.

"A temporary prosthetic will be available in a matter of days," the doctor replied. "We will need to take scans of your other hand for correct measurements of the permanent prosthetic, and manufacturing the parts will take some weeks. There are companies which sell cybernetics to civilians, but the best models are only available to Imperial military and their sale is closely controlled. We can do better ourselves."

"Fine," Leia said. "It doesn't matter to me what it looks like as long as it does what I need it to."

"It would be best if we perform the initial surgery immediately," the doctor said. "To allow for clean healing. There is a risk of infection otherwise."

"I need to speak to Mon Mothma…" Leia objected.

"Is it time sensitive?"

"I… no. I suppose not." She did feel very weary. Perhaps it would be better to get this over with. She could sleep, and talk to Mon when she was sharper.

"Then we shall prepare." Os Kel motioned her droids over, and had Leia lie down on a narrow white plas bed nearby. She felt the sting of something in the crook of her arm. "Just relax. When you wake up, the procedure will be over with."

Leia drifted off on a haze of clouds, and did not dream.

* * *

When she woke up, she didn't hurt anywhere. Leia sat up cautiously, fully expecting the momentary light-headedness that had her blinking for a moment, and looked down at where her right hand used to be. The stump was being supported by a sling around her neck and had been encased in some kind of medical capsule, a readout beeping on its side. She suspected it was probably full of bacta solution. She slipped off the bed and looked around. Doctor Os Kel was nowhere to be seen, but one of the droids looked up at her sudden movements and wheeled over.

"Greetings Commander Organa," it said. "The surgery went well. You are free to leave at your convenience, but please return after a day cycle so that we can check that healing is progressing. I have also been authorised to supply you with these analgesics." It held out a little tub in its multi-tool claws towards her. She took it and checked inside; it was full of tiny white capsules.

"Thank you," she said. "Is there a comm terminal around here?" She didn't feel quite up to walking back to her temporary quarters, or to the bridge.

"Affirmative," the droid relied. "I shall show you."

There was another room behind the main med bay. She sat down in the gratifyingly comfortable chair and told the droid it could go, then booted up the computer and activated the secure channel using her personal codes. She felt a lot better for her extended nap, although that might have been the painkillers talking. Her mind was not quite as sharp as she'd hoped, but she didn't hurt anywhere. It would have to do.

Mon Mothma answered her comm after a short wait. The holo showed that she was replying from a meeting room on board the current _Home One_ , along with Generals Dodonna and Rieekan.

"It is good to see you well, Commander Organa," Mon said. "Captain Rillan has already submitted his report of the events that occurred in the Bandomeer system. We are all glad that you survived Vader's attack, but we were hoping to hear your own analysis of what happened."

"You must admit that Vader acted… strangely," Rieekan said, nodding. "No-one aside from yourself was close enough to hear what Skywalker said to him to cause him to break off his assault."

"That is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about Mon," Leia said. "You all know who Luke's father is?"

"Yes," Dodonna replied. "Anakin Skywalker, a Knight of the old Jedi Order. Although I'm not sure what that has to do with the current situation. Why, do you have some reason to believe that isn't the case?"

"No, I'm sure that Luke is that man's son," Leia replied. "I just wondered if any of you had met him during the Clone Wars, or knew how he was supposed to have died?"

" _Supposed_ to have died?" Mon raised an eyebrow. "You believe that what General Kenobi told Luke was incorrect?"

"Maybe. I'll be more sure if I can get a better idea of what happened around the end of the Clone Wars."

Dodonna shook his head. "I do not believe I ever actually met the Hero with No Fear," he said apologetically. "He was not one of the Jedi I worked with during the war."

"I _did_ meet General Skywalker several times during the Clone Wars," Mon said. "He was often seen around the Senate building. He was particular friends with one of my colleagues; Senator Padmé Amidala." Mon laughed softly. "I say colleague. She was a dear friend. In fact, she was one of the three of us who came up with the idea for the Alliance as a political entity, along with myself and your father."

"What happened to her?" Leia said, surprised. That name… she had been looking for some sort of connection between Vader and Skywalker but she hadn't expected to find one so easily! "My father never mentioned her."

"She died - or was killed - just before Palpatine announced the formation of the Empire. We were all devastated to learn of her death - Bail was always convinced it was murder. He thought the Emperor had her assassinated."

And then he had given Vader her regnal ship? Leia was only becoming more sure that Vader and Anakin Skywalker were one and the same. What exactly was the relationship between Skywalker and Senator Amidala?

"So Anakin Skywalker was a friend of hers?" she asked.

"Closer, I think, than just a friend," Mon replied. "Not that there were ever anything but rumours, but the two of them weren't very subtle. The way Padmé talked about him… Bail and I had long suspected they were lovers… and then she became pregnant. She refused to tell anyone who the father was, but who else could it have been?"

"She was Luke's mother?" Leia asked, eyes wide, unable to hide her shock. It all made sense now… Vader's uncharacteristic protectiveness of that yacht was because of _her_.

"That was my first reaction when he turned up," Mon said. "But Padmé was still pregnant at her funeral… or whoever killed her wanted everyone to think that was the case… I suppose it _is_ the only explanation. Bail was the one to recover her body, but he never mentioned anything about a son to me."

"And where was Anakin during all this? Where was he at the end of the Clone Wars?"

"Let me think," Mon said, hearing the tension in Leia's voice and frowning. "The Jedi were always secretive and only more so in wartime - they kept their internal matters closed to the rest of the galaxy. It's been a long time, and I'm not sure I remember exactly but… I _think_ General Skywalker had been appointed as the primary liaison between the Chancellor and the Jedi Council. He was on Coruscant when Order 66 was implemented. I would assume he was at the Jedi Temple when the clones marched on it; there is no way he could have survived. Even _he_ couldn't have fought off an entire battalion."

"Not unless he wasn't fighting them at all," Leia said.

"What are you suggesting?" General Dodonna asked.

"That Anakin Skywalker is still very much alive, although not going by that name anymore," Leia said. She felt angry enough to spit. So much for the Jedi hero of the Clone Wars Luke had looked up to! How long had Skywalker been working for Palpatine? How long had he been a traitor to all that was good and right in the galaxy? And Luke… how must he feel, now that he knew the truth? Vader clearly didn't want him dead anymore, but she doubted that what he had planned for Luke would be anything pleasant.

"What do you mean?" General Rieekan leaned forwards, looking excited. "If there's another retired Jedi out there, if he's anything like those that have worked with the Alliance before, if he's like Fulcrum was…"

"No," Leia replied, although she took note of that code name. Fulcrum… that sounded somehow familiar, but she had never heard of any Alliance Jedi before now. She hadn't even thought there _had been_ any Jedi left aside from Kenobi. "There's a reason that Vader backed down when Luke confronted him. What Luke said to him… he called him 'Father'."

The silence drew out, long and horrible.

"No…" Mon said. "No surely not. _Skywalker_? He was nothing _like_ Vader!"

"Hmmm…" Dodonna stroked his beard, looking troubled. "I may never had met him, but I knew his reputation. He was an excellent pilot and tactician, even if his plans tended to be… unusual at best. I cannot speak as to his character, but in military ability…"

"If only Kenobi was still alive so we could ask him," Rieekan said. "From the story Luke Skywalker gave the Alliance, the Jedi had been very certain that Vader killed Anakin Skywalker. There must have been a reason for that."

"What we really need is to ask another Jedi who was alive back then," Mon said quietly. "Tell me Rieekan - _is_ Fulcrum still alive?"

"We haven't heard anything from her in years," General Rieekan replied. "She just went quiet one day. Bail was always her primary contact though - he knew how to contact her. I didn't. But she was managing that cell out on the Outer Rim… Spectre, wasn't it? If anyone knows what happened to her, they might."

"Return to the fleet, and bring Captain Solo with you," Mon Mothma ordered. "He might have heard something while he was a hostage. We can debrief the pair of you thoroughly, and then we can send you to meet with the Spectre cell and investigate this matter further."

Leia nodded. "I'll pass that on to Captain Rillan," she said.


End file.
